Dwellers in the Hills: A Novel

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•

THE (;iF-r OF

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i

BY

MELVILLE DAVISSON POST

DWELLERS IN THE HILLS

16®, cloth. ... $

THE MAN OP LAST RESORT

12'*, paper . . 5octs.
Cloth $1.00

THE STRANGE SCHEMES
OP RANDOLPH MASON

za°, paper
Cloth.

Socts.
fz.oo

Dwellers in the

Hills

By

Melville Davisson Post

Author of "Randolph Mason'*
**The Man of Last Resort/' etc.

G. P. Putnam's Sons

New York and London

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Copyrigbtf X90Z
By MELVILLE DAVISSON POST

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TO
MY MOTHER

CONTENTS

CHAPTBR

I. — The October Land
II. — The Petticoat and the Pre

TENDER • . . .

III. — The Passing of an Illusion
IV. — Concerning Hawk Rufe
V. — The Waggon-maker
VI. — The Maid and the Intruders
VII. — The Master Builders .
VIII. — Some Remarks of Saint Paul
IX. — Christian the Blacksmith .
X. — On the Choosing of Enemies
XI. — The Wardens of the River
XII. — The Uses of the Moon
XIII. — The Six Hundred
XIV. — Relating to the First Liars

PAGB

I

12
21

35

46
58

70

8s

lOI

114

127

141

156

171

vi Contents

XV. — When Providence is Pagan
XVI. — Through the Big Water .
XVII. — Along the Hickory Ridges
XVIII. — By the Light of a Lantern
XIX. — The Orbit of the Dwarfs .
XX. — On the Art of Going to Ruin .
XXI. — The Exit of the Pretender

DWELLERS IN THE HILLS

THE
DWELLERS IN THE HILLS

THE OCTOBER LAND

1SAT on the ground with my youthful legs
tucked under me, and the bridle rein of El
Mahdi over my arm, while I hammered a
copper rivet into my broken stirrup strap. A
little farther down the ridge Jud was idly
swinging his great driving whip in long, snaky
coils, flicking now a dry branch, and now a red
autumn leaf from the clay road. The slim
buckskin lash would dart out hissing, writhe an
instant on the hammered road-bed, and snap
back with a sharp, clear report.
The great sorrel was oblivious of this pastime

2 Dwellers in the Hills

•

of his master. The lash whistled narrowly by his
red ears, but it never touched them. In the even-
ing sunlight the Cardinal was a horse of bronze.

Opposite me in the shadow of the tall hick-
ory timber the man Ump, doubled like a fin-
ger, was feeling tenderly over the coffin joints
and the steel blue hoofs of the Bay Eagle,
blowing away the dust from the clinch of each
shoe-nail and pressing the flat calks with his
thumb. No mother ever explored with more
loving cafe the mouth of her child for evidence
of a coming tooth. Ump was on his never-
ending quest for the loose shoe-nail. It was
the serious business of his life.

I think he loved this trim, nervous mare
better than any other thing in the world.
When he rode, perched like a monkey, with
his thin legs held close to her sides, and his
short, humped back doubled over, and his head
with its long hair bobbing about as though
his neck were loose-coupled somehow, he was
eternally caressing her mighty withers, or feel-
ing for the play of each iron tendon under her
satin skin. And when we stopped, he glided
down to finger her shoe-nails.

The October Land 3

Then he talked to the mare sometimes, as
he was doing now. ** There is a little ridge in
the hoof, girl, but it won't crack ; I know it
won't crack." And, " This nail is too high.
It is my fault. I was gabbin' when old Hor-
nick drove it."

On his feet, he looked like a clothes-pin
with the face of the strangest old child. He
might have been one left from the race of
Dwarfs who, tradition said, lived in the Hills
before we came.

His mare was the mother of EI Mahdi. I
remember how Ump cried when the colt was
born, and how he sat out in the rain, a mis-
erable drenched rat, because his dear Bay
Eagle was in the mysterious troubles of ma-
ternity, and because she must be very unhappy
at being on the north side of the hill among
the black hawthorn bushes, for that was a
bad sign — the worst sign in the world — show-
ing the devil would have his day with the colt
now and then.

I used, when I was little, to hear talk once
in a while of some very wonderful person whom
men called 9 " genius," and of what it was to

4 Dwellers in the Hills

be a genius. The word puzzled me a good
deal, because I could not understand what was
meant when it was explained to me. I used
to ponder over it, and hope that some day I
might see one, which would be quite as won-
derful, I had no doubt, as seeing the man out
of the moon. Then, when El Mahdi came
into his horse estate and our lives began to
run together, I would lie awake at night try-
ing to study out what sort of horse it was that
deliberately walked off the high banks along
the road, or pitched me out into the deep blue-
grass, or over into the sedge bushes, when it
occurred to him that life was monotonous,
tumbling me upside down like a girl, although
I could stick in my brother's big saddle when
the Black Abbot was having a bad day, — and
everybody knew the Black Abbot was the
worst horse in the Hills.

Wondering about it, the suggestion came
that perhaps El Mahdi was a '* genius. " Then
I pressed the elders for further data on the
word, and studied the horse in the light of
what they told me. He fitted snug to the form-
ula. He neither feared God, nor regarded

The October Land 5

man, so far as I could tell. He knew how to
do things without learning, and he had no con-
science. The explanation had arrived. El
Mahdi was a genius. After that we got on
better ; he yielded a sort of constructive obe-
dience, and I lorded it over him, swaggering
like a king's governor. But deep down in my
youthful bosom, I knew that this obedience
was only pretended, and that he obeyed merely
because he was indifferent.

He stood by while I hammered the stirrup,
with his iron grey head held high in the air,
looking away over the hickory ridge across the
blue hills, to the dim wavering face of the
mountains. He was almost seventeen hands
high, with deep shoulders, and flat legs trim
at thb pastern as a woman's ankle, and a coat
dark grey, giving one the idea of good blue
steel. He was entirely, I may say he was
abominably, indifferent, except when it came
into his broad head to wipe out my swaggering
arrogance, or when he stood as now, staring at
the far-off smoky wall of the Hills, as though
he hoped to find there, some day farther on, a
wonderful message awaiting him, or some

6 Dwellers in the Hills

friend whom he had lost when he swam Lethe,
or some ancient enemy.

I finished with the stirrup, buckled it back
into its leather and climbed into the saddle.
It was one of the bitter things that my young
legs were not long enough to permit me to
drive my foot deep into the wide, wooden
stirrup and swing into the saddle as Jud did
with the Cardinal, or as my brother did when
the Black Abbot was in a hurry and he was
not. I explained it away, however, by point-
ing out, like a boy, not that my legs were
short, but that El Mahdi, the False Prophet,
was a very high horse.

Jud had not dismounted, and Ump was
on the Bay Eagle like a squirrel, by the time I
had fairly got into the saddle. Then we
started again in a long, swinging trot, El
Mahdi leading, the Cardinal next, and be-
hind him the Bay Eagle. The road trailed
along the high ridge beside the tall shell-
bark hickories, now the granary of the grey
squirrel, and the sumach bushes where the
catbirds quarrelled, and the dry old poplars
away in the blue sky, where the woodpecker

The October Land 7

and the great Indian hen hammered like
carpenters.

The sun was slipping through his door, and
from far below us came a trail of blue smoke
and a smell of wood ashes where some driver's
wife had started a fire, prepared her skillet,
and moved out her scrubbed table, — signs that
the supper was on its way, streaked bacon,
potatoes, sliced and yellow, and the blackest
coffee in the world. Now and then on the
hillside, in some little clearing, the fodder
stood in loose, bulging shocks bound with
green withes, while some old man or half-
grown lad plied his husking-peg in the corn
spread out before him, working with the swift-
ness and the dexterity of a machine, ripping
the husk with one stroke of the wooden peg
bound to his middle finger, and snapping the
ear at its socket, and tossing it into the air,
where it gleamed like a piece of gold.

Below was the great, blue cattle land, rising
in higher and higher hills to the foot of the
mountains. The road swept around the nose
of the ridge and plunged into the woods, wind-
ing in and out as it crawled down into the grass

8 Dwellers in the Hills

hills. The flat curve at the summit of the
ridge was bare, and, looking down, one could
see each twist of the road where it crept out on
the bone of the hill to make its turn back into
the woods.

As I passed over the brow of the ridge, I
heard Jud call, and, turning my head, saw that
both he and Ump were on the ground, look-
ing down at the road below. Jud stood with
his broad shoulders bent forward, and Ump
squatted, peering down under the palm of his
hand. I rode back just in time to catch the
flash of wheels sweeping into the wood from
one of the bare turns of the road. Yet even
in that swift glimpse, I thought I knew who
was below, and so I did not ask, but waited
until they should come into the open space
again farther down. I sat with the bridle rein
loose on El Mahdi's neck and my hands rest-
ing idly on the horn of the saddle. I think I
must have been smiling, for when Ump looked
up at me, his wizened face was so serious that
I burst out into a loud laugh.

•• Well," I said, *' it 's Cynthia, is n't it ?
At half a mile she ought n't to be so very

The October Land 9

terrible." And I opened my mouth to laugh
again. But that laugh never came into the
world. Just then a big horse with a man's
saddle on him and the reins tied to the horn
trotted out into the open, and behind him
Cynthia's bay cob and her high, trim cart, and
beside Cynthia on the seat was a man.

I saw the red spokes of the wheel, the silver
on the harness, the flash of the grey feather
in Cynthia's hat, and even the bit of ribbon
half - way out the long whip - staff. Then
they vanished again, while up the wind came
a peal of laughter and the rumble of wheels,
and the faint hammering of horses in the iron
road. On the instant, my heart gave a great
thump, and grew very bitter, and my face
hardened and clouded. '* Who was it, Jud ? "
I said. And my jaws felt stiff. ** It was
surely Miss Cynthia," he began, '* an' it was
surely a Woodford cattle-horse." Then he
stopped with his mouth open, and began to
rub his chin. I turned to Ump. *' What
Woodford ? " I asked.

The hunchback twisted his shaggy head
around in his collar like a man who wishes to

lo Dwellers in the Hills

have a little more air in his throat. Then he
said : ** He was a big, brown horse with a bald
face, an' he struck out with his knees when he
trotted. Them 's the Woodford horses. The
saddle was black with long skirts, an' it had
only one girth. Them 's the Woodford sad-
dles. An' the stirrups was iron, an' there are
only one Woodford who rides with his feet
in iron."

I looked at Jud, searching his face for some
trace of doubt on which to hang a little hoping,
but it was all bronze and very greatly troubled.
Then he saw what I wanted, and began to
stammer. '* May be the horse was tender, an'
that was the reason." But Ump piped in,
scattering the little cloud, ** That horse ain't
lame. He trots square as a dog."

Jud looked away and swung up in his
saddle. '* May be," he stammered, '* may be
the horse throwed him, an' that was the
reason." Again Ump, the destroyer of little
hopes, answered from the back of the Bay
Eagle, ** No horse ever throwed Hawk Rufe."

I sucked in the air over my bit lips when
Ump named him. Rufe Woodford with

The October Land n

Cynthia! I thought for an instant that I
should choke. Then I kicked my heels
against EI Mahdi and swung him around
down-hill. He galloped from the jump, and
behind him thundered the Cardinal, and the
Bay Eagle, with her silk nostrils stretched,
jumping long and low like a great cat.

CHAPTER II

THE PETTICOAT AND THE PRETENDER

NOT least among the things which the
devil's imps ought to know from watch-
ing the world is this : that hatred is always big
when one is young. Then, if the heart is
bitter, it is bitter through and through. It is
terribly just, and terribly vindictive against
the stranger who hurts us with a cruel word,
against our brother when we have misunder-
stood his heart, against the traitor who owes
us love because we loaned him love. It is
strange, too, how that hatred becomes a great
force, pressing out the empty places of the
heart, and making the weak, strong, and the
simple, crafty.

El Mahdi ran with his jaws set on the bit,
jumping high and striking the earth with his

13

• The Petticoat and the Pretender 1 3

le^s half stiff, the meanest of all the mean
whims of this eccentric horse. On the level it
was a hard enough gait ; and on the hill road
none could have stood the intolerable jamming
but one long schooled in the ugly ways of the
False Prophet. Along the skirts of the saddle,
running almost up to the horn, were round,
quilted pads of leather prepared against this
dangerous habit. I rode with my knees
doubled and wedged in against the pads,
catching the terrible jar where there was bone
and tendon and leather to meet and break it,
and from long custom I rode easily, uncon-
scious of my extraordinary precautions against
the half-bucking jump.

The fence rushed past. The trees, as they
always do, seemed to wait until we were
almost upon them, and then jump by. Still
the horse was not running fast. He wasted
the value of his legs by jumping high in the
air like a goat, instead of running with his
belly against the earth like every other sensible
horse whose business is to shorten distance.

He swept around the bare curves with the
most reckless, headlong plunges, and I caught

14 Dwellers in the Hills

the force of the great swing, now with the
right, and now with the left knee, throwing
the whole weight of my body against the
horse's shoulder next to the hill. Once in a
while the red nose of the Cardinal showed by
my stirrup and dropped back, but Jud was
holding his horse well and riding with his
whole weight in the stirrups and the strain on
the back-webbed girth of his saddle where it
ought to be. It was a dangerous road if the
horse fell, only El Mahdi never fell, although
he sometimes blundered like a cow; and the
Cardinal never fell when he ran, and the Bay
Eagle, who knew all that a horse ever learned
in the world, — we would as soon have expected
to see her fly up in the air as to fall in the road.
We were a mile down the long hill, thunder-
ing like a drove of mad steers, when I caught
through the tree-tops a glimpse of Cynthia's
cart, and wrenched the bit out of El Mahdi's
teeth. He was not inclined to stop, and
plunged, ploughing long furrows in the clay
road. But a stiff steel bit is an unpleasant
thing with which to take issue, and he finally
stopped, sliding on his front feet.

The Petticoat and the Pretender 15

We turned the corner in a slow, deliberate
trot, and there, as calmly as though it were
the most natural thing in the world, was
Cynthia, sitting as straight as a isapling on the
high seat, with the reins held close in her left
hand, and beside her Woodford, and jogging
along before the cart was the bald-faced cattle-
horse.

A pretty picture in the cool shade of the
golden autumn woods. Of course, Cynthia
was the most beautiful woman in the world.
My brother thought so, and that was enough
for us. It was true that Ward observed her
from a point of view wonderfully subject to a
powerful bias, but that was no business of
ours. Ward said it, and there the matter
ended. If Ward had said that Cynthia was
ugly, a trim, splendid figure, brown hair, and
a manner irresistible would not have saved
Cynthia from being eternally ugly so far as we
were concerned; and although Cynthia had
lands and Polled-Angus cattle and spent her
winters in France, she must have remained
eternally ugly.

So, when we knew Ward's opinion, from

1 6 Dwellers in the Hills

that day Cynthia was moved up to the head of
the line of all the women we had ever heard
of, and there she remained.

Our opinion of Woodford was equally clear.
In every way he was our rival. His lands
joined ours, stretching from the black Stone
Coal south to the Valley River. His renters
and drivers were as numerous and as ugly a
siet as ours.

Besides, he was Ward's rival among the
powerful men of the Hills, ten years older,
shrewd, clear-headed, and in his business a
daring gambler. Sometimes he would cross
the Stone Coal and buy every beef steer in the
Hills, and sometimes Ward bought. It was a
stupendous gamble, big with gain, or big with
loss, and at such times the Berrys of Upshur,
the Alkires of Rock Ford, the Arnolds of
Lewis, the Coopmans of Lost Creek, and even
the Queens of the great Valley took the wall,
leaving the road to Woodford and my brother
Ward. And when they put their forces in the
field and manoeuvred in the open, there were
mighty times and someone was terribly hurt.

I think Woodford lacked the inspiration and

The Petticoat and the Pretender 17

something of the swift judgment of my brother,
but he stopped at nothing, and was misled by
no illusions. Woodford and my brother never
joined their forces. Ward did not trust him,
and Woodford trusted no man on the face of
the earth. There is an old saying that '' the
father's rival is the son's enemy"; and we
hated Woodford with the healthy, illimitable
hatred of a child.

I was young, and the arrogance of pride was
very great as I pulled up by the tall cart. I
had Cynthia red-handed, and wanted to gloat
over the stammer and the crimson flush of the
traitor. I assumed the attitude of the very
terrible. Sharp and jarring and without pre-
monition are the surprises of youth. This
straight young woman turned, for a moment
her grey eyes rested on the False Prophet and
me, then a smile travelled from her red mouth
out through the land of dimples, and she
laughed like a blackbird.

'* Of all the funny little boys! Dear me! "
And she laughed again.

I know that the bracing influence of a holy
cause has been tremendously overrated, for

f

»

1 8 Dwellers in the Hills

under the laugh I felt myself pass into a status
of universal shrinking until I feared that I
might entirely disappear, leaving a wonder
about the empty saddle. And the blush and
the stammer, — will men be pleased never to
write in books any more, how these things are
marks of the guilty ? For here was Cynthia,
as composed as the October afternoon, and
here was I stammering and red.

** Quiller! " she pealed, " what a little sav-
age ! Do look ! " And she put her grey glove
on her companion's arm.

Woodford clapped his hand on his knee, and
broke out into a jeering chuckle. "Why!"
he said, ''it 's little Quiller. I thought it
must be some bold, bad robber."

The jeer of the enemy helped me a little,
but not enough. The reply went in a stam-
mer. *' You are all out of breath," said
Cynthia; '' a hill is no place to run. The
horse might have fallen."

I gathered my jarred wits and answered.
'' Our horses don't fall." It was the justifica-
tion of the horse first. Woodford stroked his
clean-cut jaw, tanned like leather. " Your

The Petticoat and the Pretender 19

brother/' he said, " tumbled out of the saddle
some days ago. It is said his horse fell."

My courage flared. ** Do you know how
the Black Abbot came to fall ? " I answered.

'* An awkward rider, little Quiller," he said.
" Is it a good guess ? "

" You know all about it/' I began, breaking
out in my childish anger. ** You know how
that furrow as long as a man's finger got on
the Black Abbot's right knee. You know — "
I stopped suddenly. Cynthia's eyes were
resting on me, and there was something in
their grey depths that made me stop.

But Woodford went on. ** My great aunt,"
he said, " was thrown day before yesterday,
but she did not take to her bed over it. How
is your brother ? "

" Able to take care of himself," I said.

" Perhaps," he responded slowly, '* to take
care of himself." And he glanced suggestively
at Cynthia.

The innuendo was intolerable. I gaped at
the slim, brown-haired girl. Surely she would
resent this. Traitor if she pleased, she was
still a woman. But she only looked up wist-

20 Dwellers in the Hills

fully into Woodford's face and smiled as art-
lessy winning, merry a smile as ever was born
on a woman's mouth.

In that instant the picture of Ward came up
before me. His pale face with its black hair
framed in pillows; his hand, always so sug-
gestive of unlimited resource, lying on the
white coverlid, so helpless that old Liza moved
it in her great black palm as though it were a
little child's; and across on the mantle shelf,
where he could see it when his eyes were open,
was that old picture of Cynthia with the funny
little curls.

I felt a great flood rising up from the springs
of life, a hot, rebellious flood of tears. A mo-
ment I held them back at the gateway of the
eyepits, then they gushed through, and I
struck the False Prophet over his iron grey
withers, and we passed in a gallop.

CHAPTER III

THE PASSING OF AN ILLUSION

EL MAHDI wanted to run, and I let him
go. The swing of the horse and the
rush of fresh, cool air was good. Nothing in
all the world could have helped me so well.
The tears were mastered, but I had a sense of
tremendous loss. I had jousted with the first
windmill, riding up out of youth's golden
country, and I had lost one of the splendid
illusions of that enchanted land. I was cruelly
hurt. How cruelly, any man will know when
he recalls his first jamming against the granite
door-posts of the world.

Of love and all its mysterious business, I
knew nothing. But of good faith and fair
dealing I had a child's conception, the terrible
justness of which is but dimly understood.

21

22 Dwellers in the Hills

The new point of view was ugly and painful.
From the time when I toddled about in little
dresses and Ward carried me on his shoulder
in among the cattle or hoisted me up on the
broad horn of his saddle, I had looked upon
him as a big, considerate Providence. I did
not understand how there could be anything
that he could not do, nor anything in the
world worth having at all that he could not
get, if he tried. So when he told me of Cyn-
thia, I considered that she belonged to us, and
passed on to the next matter claiming my
youthful attention. It never occurred to me
that Cynthia could be other than happy to
pass under the suzerainty of my big brother.
True, I never thought very much about it,
since it was so plainly a glorious privilege.
Still, why had she made her promise, if she
could not keep her shoulder to it like a man ?
We did not like it when Ward told us. We
did not think much of women, Ump and Jud
and I, except old Liza, who was another of
those splendid Providences. Now it was clear
that we were right.

It all went swimmingly when Ward was by,

The Passing of an Illusion 23

but no sooner was he stretched out with
a dislocated shoulder from that mysterious
blunder of the Black Abbot, than here was
Cynthia trailing over the country with Hawk
Rufe.

I stopped at the old Alestock mill where
Ben's Run goes trickling into the Stone Coal,
climbed down from El Mahdi and washed my
face in the water, and then passed the rein
under my arm and sat down in the road to
await the arrival of my companions. The
echo of the horses' feet was already coming,
carried downward across the pasture land, and
soon the head of the Cardinal arose above the
little hill behind me, and then the Bay Eagle,
and in a moment more Ump and Jud were
sitting with me in the road.

We usually dismounted and sat on the earth
when we had grave matters to consider. It
was an unconscious custom like that which
takes the wise man into the mountains and
the lover under the moon. I think the Arab
Sheik long and long ago learned this custom
as we had learned it, — perhaps from a dim
conception of some aid to be had from the

24 Dwellers in the Hills

great earth when one's heart is very deeply
troubled.

I knew well enough that my companions
had not passed Woodford without running the
gauntlet of some interrogation, and I waited
to hear what they had to say. I think it was
Jud who spoke first , and his face was full of
shadows. " I would n't never a believed
it of Miss Cynthia," he began, '* I would n't
never a believed it."

" Don't talk about her," I broke in angrily.
•• What did Hawk Rufe say ? "

Jud studied for a moment as though he were
slowly arranging the proper sequence of some
distant memory. Then he went on. " He
wanted to know where I got that big red horse,
an' if Mr. Ward's men ever walked any, an'
he — " The man's open mouth closed on the
broken sentence, and Ump answered for him,
sitting under the Bay Eagle with his arm
around her slim front leg. ** An' he wanted
to know what we did with little Quiller when
he cried."

I thought I should die of the intolerable
shame. I had cried — blubbered away as

The Passing of an Illusion 25

though I were a red-cheeked little girl in a
clean calico petticoat.

After the dead line which Ump had crossed
for him with the brutal frankness that went
along with his dwarfed body, Jud continued
with his report. ** He asked me where we
was goin', an' I told him we was goin* home.
He asked me if we had had any word from Mr.
Ward to-day, an' I told him we had n't had
any. Then he said we had better take the
Hacker's Creek road because the Gauley was
up from the mountain rains, an' runnin' logs,
an* if we got in there in the night we would
git you killed."

** An*," interrupted Ump, turning round
under the Bay Eagle, " an' then Miss Cynthia
looked up sharp at him like a catbird, an' she
laughed, an' she said how that advice was n't
needed, because little boys always went home
by the safest road."

The taunt sank in as oil sinks into a cloth.
I may have blushed and stammered, and I
may have blubbered like a milksop, but it
was not because I was afraid. I would show
Woodford and I would show this fickle Miss

26 Dwellers in the Hills

Gadabout that I did not need any advice about
roads. If my life had been then in jeopardy,
I would not have taken it burdened with a
finger's weight of obligation to Rufus Wood-
ford or Cynthia Carper. It might have gone
out over the sill of the world, for good and all.

I arose and put the bridle rein over El
Mahdi's head while I stood, my right hand
reaching up on his high withers. Jud and
Ump got into their saddles and turned down
toward the ford of the Stone Coal on the
Hacker's Creek road, which Woodford had
suggested. But under the coat my heart was
stewing, and I would not have gone that way if
the devil and his imps had been riding the other.
I climbed into the saddle and shouted down
to them. They turned back at the water of
the ford. '* Where are you going ? " I called.

** Home. Where else ? " replied the dwarfed
Ump.

** It *s a nice roundabout way you 're tak-
ing," I said. *' The Overfield road is three
miles shorter."

" But the Gauley 's boomin'," answered
Jud; ** Woodford said not to go that way."

The Passing of an Illusion 27

" It 's the first time," I shouted, " that any
of our people ever took directions from Hawk
Rufe. As for me, I *m going by the Gauley."
And I turned El Mahdi into the wooded road
on the left of the turnpike.

For a moment the two hesitated, discussing
something which I could not hear. Then they
rode up out of the Stone Coal and came clat-
tering after me.

It is wonderful how swiftly the night comes
in among the boles of the great oak trees.
The dark seems to rise upward from the earth.
The sounds of men and beasts carry over long
distance, drifting in among the trees, and the
loneliness of the vast, empty earth comes back
to us, — what is forgotten in the rush of the
sunshine, — the constant loom of the mystery.
One understands then why the early men
feared the plains when it was dark, and hud-
dled themselves together in the hills. Who
could say what ugly, dwarfish things, what evil
fairies, what dangerous dead men might climb
up over the rim of the world ? A man was
not afraid of the grey wolf, or even the huge
beast that trumpeted in the morass by the

28 Dwellers in the Hills

great water when the light was at his back,
but when the world was darkened old men had
seen strange shapes running by the wolf's
muzzle, or groping with the big mastodon in
the marsh land, and against these a stone axe
was a little weapon.

Of all animals, man alone has this fear of
the dark. Neither the horse nor the steer is
afraid of shadows, and from these, as he travels
through the night, a man may feed the springs
of his courage. I have been scared when I
was little, stricken with panic when night
caught me on the hills, and have gone down
among the cattle and stood by their great
shoulders until I felt the fear run off me like
water, and have straightway marched out as
brave as any trooper of an empress. And
from those earliest days when I rode, with the
stirrups crossed on my brother's saddle, after
some kind old straying ox, I was always sat-
isfied to go where the horse would go. He
could see better than I, and he could hear
better, and if he tramped peacefully, the land
was certainly clear of any evil thing.

We crossed the long wooded hill clattering

The Passing of an Illusion 29

like a troop of the queen's cavalry , and turned
down toward the great level bow which the
road makes before it crosses the Gauley.
There was a dim light rising beyond the flat
lands where the crooked elves toiled with their
backs against the golden moon. But they
were under the world yet, with only the yellow
haze shining through the door. This was the
acre of ghosts. Tale after tale I had heard,
sitting on the knee of the old grey negro
Clabe, about the horrors of this haunted
" bend " in the Gauley. There, when I was
a child, had lived old Bodkin in a stone house,
now a ruin, by the river, — a crooked, mean
old devil with a great hump, and eyes like a
toad. He came to own the land through some
suspicious will about which there clung the
atmosphere of crime, as men said. When I
saw him first, I was riding behind my brother,
and he stopped us and tried to induce Ward to
buy his land. He was mounted on a red roan
horse, and looked like an old knotty spider.

I can still remember how frightened I was,
and how I hid my face against my brother's
coat and hugged him until my arms ached.

30 Dwellers in the Hills

When Ward inquired why he wished to sell, he
laughed in a sort of cackle, and replied that he
was going to marry a wife and go to the moon.

Now, tradition told that he had married
many a wife, but that they died quickly in the
poisoned chamber of this spider. Ward looked
the bridegroom over from his twisted feet to
his hump, and there must have been some
merry shadow in his face, for Bodkin leaned
over the horn of his saddle and stretched out
his hand, a putty-coloured hand, with long,
bony fingers. "Do you see that?*' he
croaked. "If I ever get that hand on a
woman, she *s mine."

Then I began to cry, and Ward wished the
old man a happy voyage to the cloud island,
and we rode on.

He did marry a wife, and one morning, but
little afterwards, two of my brother's drivers
found her hanging to the limb of a dead apple
tree with a bridle rein knotted to her neck, and
her bare feet touching the tops of the timothy
grass. When they came to look for Bodkin,
he had disappeared with his red roan horse.
Ward explained that he had ridden through

The Passing of an Illusion 3 1

the gap of the mountains into the South, but
I thought, with the negroes, that someone
ought to have seen him if he had gone that
way ; besides, I had heard him say that he was
going to the moon. Later, old Bart and Levi
Dillworth, returning from some frolic, had seen
Bodkin riding his horse in a terrible gallop,
with the dead woman across the horn of his
saddle, on his way to the moon.

It was true that both Bart and Levi were
long in the bow arm, and men who loved truth
less than they loved laurels. Still the tale
had splendid conditions precedent, and old
Clabe arose to its support with many an elo-
quent wag of his head.

I was running through this very ghost story
when El Mahdi stopped in the road and
pricked up his ears. At the same moment
Jud and Ump pulled up beside me. Perhaps
their minds were in the same channel. We
listened for full a minute. Far down in the
marsh land I could hear the frogs chanting
their mighty chorus to the stars, and the little
screech-owl whining from some tree-top far
up against the hill. I was about to ride on

32 Dwellers in the Hills

when Jud caught at the rein and put up his
hand. Then I heard the sound that the
horse was listening to, but at the great dis-
tance it was only a sound, a faint, wavering,
indefinite echo, coming up from the far-away
bend of the Gauley. The rim of the moon
was rising now out of the under world,
and I watched the road trailing away into a
deep shadow by the river. As I watched, I
saw something rise out of this gloom and
sweep down the dim road. It passed for a
moment through a belt of moonlight, and I
saw that it was a horse ridden by a shadow.

Then we clearly heard long, heavy galloping.
Jud dropped my rein and wrenched the Card-
inal around on his haunches. He was not
afraid of the living, but he was afraid of the
dead. As the horse reared, Ump caught the
bit under his jaw and, throwing the Bay Eagle
against him, wedged the horse and Jud in
between El Mahdi and himself. Ump w^s
neither afraid of the living nor the dead. He
called to me, and I seized the Cardinal's
bit on my side, gripping the iron shank with
my fingers through the rein rings.

s

The Passing of an Illusion 33

Panic was on the giant Jud, and he lifted
the horse into the air, dragging Ump and my-
self half out of our saddles. Men in their
hopeless egotism have far underestimated the
good sense of the horse. The Cardinal was in
no wise frightened. At once, it seemed to me,
he recognised the irresponsibility of his rider.
In some moment of the struggle the bit slipped
forward, and the horse clamped his powerful
jaws on it and set the great muscles in his neck
to help us hold.

The horses rocked and plunged, but we held
them together. The Bay Eagle, quick-witted
as any woman, crowded the Cardinal close,
throwing her weight against his shoulders, and
El Mahdi, indifferent, but stubborn as an ox,
held his ground as though he were bolted to
the road.

I heard Ump cursing, now Jud for his
cowardice, now the ghost for its infernal
riding. *' Damn you, fool! Stay an* see it.
Stay an' see it.*' And then, '* Damn Bodkin
an' his dead wife! If he rides this way, he
stops here or he goes under to hell."

As for me, I was afraid. Only the swing

34 Dwellers in the Hills

and jamming of the struggle held me. The
gallop of the advancing horse was now loud,
clear, hammering like an anvil. It passed for
a moment out of sight in a hollow of the road
below. In the next instant it would be on us.
The giant Jud made one last mighty effort.
The Cardinal went straight into the air. I
clung to the bit, dragged up out of the saddle.
I felt my foot against the pommel, my knee
against the steel shoulder of the great horse,
my face under the Cardinal's wide red throat.

I heard the reins snap on both sides of the
bit — pulled in two. And then the loud, harsh
laugh of the man Ump.

'' Hell! It 's Jourdan an' Red Mike."

CHAPTER IV

CONCERNING HAWK RUFE

OLD wise men in esoteric idiom, unintel>
ligible to the vulgar, have endeavoured
to write down in books how the human mind
works in its house, — and I believe they have
not succeeded very well. They have broken
into this house when it was empty, and
laboured to decipher the mystic hieroglyphics
written on its walls, and learn to what uses the
departed craftsman put the strange, delicate
implements which they found fastened so
primly in their places.

They have got at but little, as I have heard
them say, deploring the brevity of life, and
the tremendous magnitude of the labour. The
learned, as one put it, had barely time to ex-
plain to his successor that be had found the
35

36 Dwellers in the Hills

problem unsolvable. I think they might as well
have gone about tracking the rainbow, for all
they have learned of this mysterious business.

In fewer moments than a singing maid takes
to double back on her chorus, I had forgotten
all about the ghost. I was sitting idly in the
saddle now with the rein over my wrist. Jour-
dan's message from my brother had given
enough to think of. I knew that Ward in the
preceding autumn had bought the cattle of two
great graziers south of the Valley River, to be
taken up during the October month, but I
did not know that on a summer afternoon he
had sold these cattle to Woodford, binding
himself to deliver them within three days after
they were demanded.

The trade was fair enough when the two had
made it. But now the price of beef cattle was
off almost thirty dollars a bullock, and Wood-
ford was in a position to lose more money than
his bald-faced cattle-horse could carry in a
sack. He had waited all along hoping for the
tide to turn. Suddenly, to-day he had de-
manded his cattle.

To-day, when Ward was on his back and the

Concerning Hawk Rufe 37

cattle far to the south across the Valley River.
It was the contract, and he had the right to
do it, but it was like Woodford. Ward, help-
less in his bed, had sent Jourdan on Red Mike
to find us somewhere over the Gauley and bid
us bring up the cattle if we could. And so
the old man had ridden as though the devil
were after him.

The proportions of Woodford's plan outlined
slowly, and with it came a sense of tremendous
responsibility. If we carried out the contract
to the letter, — and to the letter it must be
with this man, — I knew that Woodford would
meet the 1q3s, if it stripped the coat off of his
shoulders, — meet it with a smile and some
swaggering comment. And I knew as well
that, if by any hook or crook he could prevent
the contract from being carried out, he would
do it with the devil's cleverness.

Only, I knew that the hand of Woodford
would never rise against us in the open. We
might be balked by sudden providences of
God, planned shrewdly like those which a
great churchman ruling France sometimes
called to his elbow.

38 Dwellers in the Hills

For such gentle business, not old Richelieu
was better fitted with a set of arrant scoun-
drels. There was the cunning right hand of
Hawk Rufe, the slick, villainous intriguer,
Lem Marks. No diplomatic imp, serving his
master in the kingdoms of the world, moved
with more unscrupulous smoothness. There
was Malan with his clubfoot, owned by the
devil, the drovers said, and leased to Wood-
ford for a lifetime. And there was Parson
Peppers, singing the hymns of the Lord up the
Stone Coal and down the Stone Coal. As
stout a bunch of rogues as ever went trooping
to the eternal bonfire, handy gentlemen to his
worship Woodford.

It was preposterous overmatching for a child.
Hawk Rufe had laughed well when I had
heard him laughing last. If Ward were only
back in the saddle of the Black Abbot ! But
he was stretched out over yonder with the
night shining through hi$ window, and there
was on the turning world no one but me to
strip to this duel.

Still, I had better horses, and perhaps better
men than Woodford. Jud was one of the

Concerning Hawk Rufe 39

strongest men in the Hills, afraid of the dead,
as I have written, but not afraid of any living
thing on the face of the earth. They knew
this over the Stone Coal ; the club-footed giant
Malan had a lot of scars under his shirt that
were not born on him. And there was Ump,
a crooked thing of a man truly, but a crooked
thing of a man that would hobnob with the
king of all the fiends, banter for banter, and in
whose breast cowardice was as dead as Judas.

I looked down at the humble giant, shame-
faced in the moonlight, tying his broken bridle
reins back in their rings, and drawing the
knots tight with his bronzed fingers that
looked like the coupling-pins of a cart, — and
then at the hunchback doubled up in his sad-
dle. Maybe, — and my blood began to rise
with it, — maybe when we looked close, the
odds were not so terrible after all. Here was
bone and sinew tougher than Malan 's, and
such cunning as might cry Marks a merrier run
than he had gone for many a day.

Then, as by some sharp turn, I caught a
new light on the two hours already gone.
Man alive ! We had been in the game for all

40 Dwellers in the Hills

of those two blessed hours with our eyes
sealed up tight as the lid of a jar.

** How high was the Gauley ?" I almost
shouted, pointing my finger at Red Mike.

** 'Mid sides," answered Jourdan, turning
around in his saddle.

" 'Mid sides ! " I echoed; " and the logs ?
Was it running logs ? "

** Nothin' but brush an' a few old rails.
You can see the water mark on Red Mike
right here at the bottom of the saddle skirt."
And the old man reached down and put his
finger on the smoking horse. ** The Gauley
ain't up to stop nothin'."

I clapped my teeth together. So much for
the solicitous care of Hawk Rufe. If we had
gone by the Hacker's Creek road we should
have missed Jourdan and lost the good half
of a day. Woodford knew that Ward would
send by the shortest road. It was the first
gleam of the wolf tooth shining for a moment
behind the woolly face of the sheepskin.

I looked down at Ump. The hunchback
put his elbow on the horn of his saddle and
rested his jaw in the hollow of his hand.

Concerning Hawk Rufe 41

** Old Granny Lanum," he said, **her that 's
buried back on the Dolan Knob, used to say
that God saw for the little pup when it was
blind, but after that it was the little pup's
business. An' I reckon she knowed what she
said."

Wiser heads than mine have pondered that
problem since the world began its swinging, —
but with greater elegance, but scarcely more
clearly than Ump had put it. Old Liza used
to tell me when I was very little that if I
fought with those who were smaller than my-
self, I was fighting the wards of the Father in
heaven, and it was a lot better to get a broken
head from some sturdy urchin who was big
enough to look out for himself. And I have
always thought that old Liza was about as
close to the Ruler of Events as any one of us
is likely to get. Anyway I doubted not that
if the good God rode in the Hills, He was far
from stirrup by stirrup with Woodford.

Red Mike was beginning to shiver in his wet
coat, and Jourdan gathered up his reins.

" Mr. Ward," he said, ** told me to tell you
to stay with old Simon Betts to-night, an'

42 Dwellers in the Hills

git an early start in the momin*.** Then he
rode away, and we watched him disappear in
the hollow out of which he had come carrying
so much terror.

We were a sobered three as we turned back
into the woods. Ghosts and all the rumours
of ghosts had fled to the chimney corners.
No witch rode and there walked no spirit
from among 'the dead. Above us the oaks
knitted their fantastic tops, but it made no
fairy arch for the dancing minions of Queen
Mab. The thicket sang, but with the living
voices of the good crickets, and the owl yelled
again, diving across the road, but his piping
notes had lost their eerie treble.

There is something in the creak of saddle-
leather that has a way of putting heart in a
man. To hear the hogskin rubbing its yellow
elbows is a good sound. It means action. It
means being on the way. It means that all
the idle talking, planning, doubting is over
and done with. Sir Hubert has cut it short
with an oath and a blow of his clenched hand
that made the glasses rattle, and every swag-
gering cutthroat has his foot in the stirrup.

Concerning Hawk Rufe 43

It is good, too, when one feels the horse
holding his bit as a man might hold a child by
the fingers. No slave this, but a giant ally,
leading the way up into the enemy's country.
Out of the road, weakling!

We travelled slowly back toward the Stone
Coal. Far away a candle in some driver's
window twinkled for a moment and was shut
out by the trees. In the low land a fog was
rising, a climbing veil of grey, that seemed to
feel its path along the sloping hillside.

I heard the boom of the Stone Coal tumbling
over the welts in its bedding as we turned
down toward the old Alestock mill. The
clouds had packed together in the sky, and
the moon dipped in and out like a bobbin.
As we swept into the turnpike by the long
ford, Ump stopped, and, tossing his rein to
Jud, slipped down into the road. El Mahdi
stopped by the Cardinal. When I looked, the
hunchback was on his knees.

** What are you doing ?" I said.

Ump laughed. ''I 'm lookin* for hawks'
feathers. Where they fly thick, there ought
to be feathers."

44 Dwellers in the Hills

He nosed around on the road for some
minutes like a dog/ and then disappeared over
the bank into the willow bushes. The Stone
Coal lay like a sheet of silver, broken into long
hissing ridges, where it went driving over the
ragged strata. On the other side, the Hack-
er's Creek road lifted out of the ford and went
trailing away through the hills. In the moon-
light it was a giant's ribbon.

I had no idea of what Ump was up to, but I
should learn no earlier by a volley of ques-
tions. So I thrust my hands into my pockets
and waited.

Presently he came clambering up the bank
and got into his saddle.

•' Well," I said; *• did you find any feath-
ers ? "

** I did," he answered; ** fresh ones from the
meanest bird of the flock, an' he 's fly in' low.
I think that first turn into the Stone Coal fooled
him. But he will know better by midnight."

Then I understood it was horse tracks he
had been Ipoking for.

'* How do you know he 's trailing us ?" I
asked.

Concerning Hawk Rufe 45

** Quiller, " he answered, " when Come-an'-
go-fetch-it rides up an' down, he *s lookin' for
somethin'. An' I reckon we 're are about
ready to be looked for."

We were clattering up the turnpike while
Ump was speaking. All at once, rising out of
the far away hills, I heard a voice begin to
bellow :

" They put John on the island. Fare ye well, fare
ye well.
An' they put him there to starve him. Fare ye
well, fare ye well."

It was Parson Peppers, and of his reverence
be it said that no Brother of the Coast, rollick-
ing drunk on a dead man's chest, ever owned
a finer bellow.

I turned around in my saddle. "Peppers! '*
I cried. '* Man alive! How did you know
that it was the old bell-wether's horse ? "

Ump chuckled. *' I saw her shod once. A
number six shoe an' a toe-piece."

CHAPTER V

THE WAGGON-MAKER

A SPRING of eternal youthfulness gushing
somewhere under the bed of the mount-
ains, was a dream of the Spanish Main, sought
long and found not, as the legends run. But
it is no dream that some of us carry our in-
heritance of youthfulness shoulder to shoulder
with Eld into No Man's Country. Such an
one was Simon Betts the waggon-maker.

I sat by his smouldering fire of shavings and
hickory splinters, and wondered at the old
man in the chimney corner. He was eighty,
and yet his back was straight, his hair was
scarcely grey, and his hands, resting on the
arms of his huge wooden chair, were as un-
shrunken and powerful, it seemed to me, as
the hands of any man of middle life.

46

The Waggon-Maker 47

Eighty ! It was a tremendous hark back to
that summer, long and long ago, when Simon
came through the gap of the mountains into
the Hills. The land was full of wonders then.
The people of the copper faces prowled with
the wolf and whooped along the Gauley, The
Dwarfs lurked in the out-of-the-way corners
of the mountains, trooping down in crooked
droves to burn and kill for the very joy of
doing evil. And who could say what un-
earthly thing went by when the wind shouted
along the ridges ? The folk then were but few
in the Hills, and each busy with keeping the
life in him. The land was good, broad waters
and rich hill -tops, where the blue-grass grew
though no man sowed it. A land made ready
for a great people when it should come. With
Simon came others from the south country,
who felled the forest and let in the sunlight,
and made wide pastures for the bullock, and
so elbowed out the wandering and the evil.

High against the chimney, on two dogwood
forks, rested the long rifle with its fishtail
sight and the brass plate on the stock for the
bullets and the "patching," Below it hung

48 Dwellers in the Hills

the old powder-horn, its wooden plug dangling
from a string, — ^tools of the long ago. Closing
one's eyes one could see the tall grandsires
fighting in the beech forest, a brown patch of
hide sighted over the brass knife-blade bead,
and death, and to load again with the fiat
neck of the bullet set in the palm of the hand
and covered with powder.

That yesterday was gone, but old Simon was
doing with to-day. On two benches was a cart
wheel, with its hickory spokes radiating like fin-
gers from the locust hub, and on the fioor were
the mallet and the steel chisel with its tough oak
handle. Stacked up in the corner were bundles
of straight hickory, split from the butt of the
great shellbark log ; round cuts of dry locust,
and long timbers of white and red oak, and
quarters of the tough sugars, seasoning, hard as
iron. With these were the axe, the wedge, the
dogwood gluts, and the mauls made with no
little labour from the curled knots of the chest-
nut oak, and hooped with an iron tire-piece.

It was said on the country side that old
Simon knew lost secrets of woodcraft taught
by the early man ;; — in what moon to fell the

The Waggon-Maker 49

shingle timber that it might not curl on the
roof ; on what face of the hill the sassafras root
was red; how to know the toughest hickory
by hammering on its trunk; when twigs cut
from the forest would grow, if thrust in the
earth; and that secret day of all the year
when an axe, stuck into the bark of a tree,
would deaden it to the root.

Simon Betts was not a man of many words.
He smoked in the corner, stopping now and
then to knock the ashes from his pipe, or to
put some brief query. Jud and Ump had
come in from the old man's log stable, throw-
ing their saddles down by the door and spread-
ing the bridles out on the hearth so that the
iron bits would be warm in the morning.

** How will the day be to-morrow ? " I asked
of the waggon-maker.

** Dry," he responded; ** great rains in the
mountains, but none here for a week; then
storms."

Is n't it early for the storms ? "
Yes," he answered; *' but the wild geese
have gone over, and the storms follow."

Then he asked me where we were riding, and

4

tt

ti

50 Dwellers in the Hills

I explained that we were going to bring up
Ward's cattle from beyond the Valley River.
He said that we would find dry roads but high
rivers. The gates of the mountains would be
gushing with rains. The old man studied the
fire.

Presently he said, ** Mr. Ward is a good
man. I have seen him buy a poor scoundrel's
heifers and wink his eye when the scoundrel
salted them the night before they were weighed,
and then drove them to the scales in the morn-
ing around by the water trough."

I laughed. This was a trick originated long
ago by one Columbus, an old grazing thief of
the Rock Ford country, who went ever after-
ward by the name of ** Water Lum." It was
a terrible breach of the cattle code.

Again the old man relapsed into silence.
His eyes ran over the shoulders of the big Jud
who squatted by the fire, sewing his broken
bridle reins with a shoemaker's wax-end.

** Are you the strong man ? " he said.

The giant chuckled and grinned and drew
out the end of his thread.

"Well," continued the waggon-maker, "Mr.

The Waggon-Maker 51

Ward spoiled a mighty good blacksmith when
he put you on a horse." Then he turned to
me. "Is he the one that throwed Wood-
ford's club-footed nigger in the wrastle at
Roy's tavern ? "

'* Yes," I said, ** but one time it was a dog-
fall, and Lem Marks says that Malan slipped
the other time."

'' But he did n't slip," put in Jud. '* He
tried to lift me, an' I knee-locked him. Then
I could a throwed him if he 'd been as big
as a Polled- Angus heifer."

** Was you wrastling back-holts or breeches-
holts ? " asked old Simon, getting up from his
chair.

" Back-holts," replied Jud.

The waggon-maker nodded his head. Doubt-
less in the early time he had occasion to learn
the respective virtues of these two celebrated
methods.

'* That 's best if your back 's best," he said ;
*' but I reckon you ain't willing to let it go
with a dog-fall. You might get another chance
at him to-morrow. X saw him go up the road
about noon."

52 Dwellers in the Hills

Behind the old man Ump held up two fingers
and made a sweeping gesture. The waggon-
maker went back to the corner of his house for
some bedding. Ump leaned over. " Two
flyin'," he said. " One went east, an' one
went west, an* one went over the cuckoo's
nest. If I knowed where that cuckoo's nest
was, we 'd have the last one spotted."

'* What do you think they 're up to ? " said I.

Ump laughed. ** Oh ho, I think they 're
out lookin' for the babes in the woods ! " And
the fancy pleased him so well that he rubbed
his hands and chuckled in his crooked throat
until old Simon returned.

It was late, and the waggon-maker began his
preparations for the night. He gave me a home-
made mattress of corn husks and a hand-made
quilt, heavy and warm as a fur robe. From a
high swinging shelf he got two heifer hides,
tanned with the hair on them, soft as cloth. In
these Jud and Ump rolled themselves and, put-
ting the saddles under their heads, were pres-
ently sleeping like the illustrious Seven. The
old man fastened his door with a wooden bar,
took off his shoes, and sat down by the fire.

The Waggon-Maker 53

I went to sleep with the picture fading into
my dream, — the smoked rafters, the red wam-
pus of the old waggon-maker, and the burning
splinters crumbling into a heap of rosy ash.
A moment later, as things come and go in the
land of Nod, Cynthia and Hawk Rufe were
also sitting by this fire. Cynthia held the old
picture with the funny curls, — the one that
stands on the mantel shelf at home, — and she
was trying to rub out the curls with her
thumb, moistening it in her red mouth. But
somehow they would not rub out, and she
showed the picture to Woodford, who began
to count on his outspread fingers, " Eaney,
meany, miny mo." Only the words were
names somehow, although they sounded like
these words.

Then the dream changed, and I was on El
Mahdi in a press of fighting cattle, driven
round and round by black Malan and Parson
Peppers bellowing like the very devil.

When I awoke the fire was blazing and the
grey light of the earliest dawn was creeping in
through the chinks of the log wall. Ump
and Jud had gone to the stable and the old

54 Dwellers in the Hills

waggon-maker was busy with the breakfast.
On the hearth a mighty cake of corn-meal was
baking itself brown; potatoes roasted in the
ashes, and on a little griddle about as big as a
man's hat a great cut of half-dried beef was
broiling.

Famous chefs have spent a lifetime fitting
beef for the royal table, and a king of France
slighted the business of an empire for the ac-
quirement of this art, and a king of England
knighted a roast ; but they all died and were
buried without tasting beef as it ought to
go into a man's mouth. I write it first. A
Polled-Angus heifer, fed and watered and
cared for like a child, should be killed sud-
denly without fright, and butchered properly ;
let the choice pieces hang from a rafter by
green withes and be smoked with hickory logs
until the fibres begin to dry in them, then cut
down and broil.

I arose and went out of doors to wash the
night off. Between the house and the log
stable, under a giant sugar tree a spring of
water bubbled out through the limestone
stratum, ran laughing down a long sapling

The Waggon-Maker 55

spouty and splashed into a huge old moss-
covered trough.

With such food and such water, and the air
of the Hills, is it any wonder that Simon Betts
was a man at eighty ? Hark ye ! my masters
of the great burgs, drinking poison in your
smoky holes.

I plunged my head into the water, and my
arms up to the elbows, then came out dripping
and wiped it off on a homespun linen towel
which the old man had given me when I left
the house. As I stood rubbing my arms on
the good linen, Ump and Jud came down
from the stable and stopped to dip a drink in
the long gourd that hung by the spring. They
were about to pass on, when Ump suddenly
stopped and pointed out a man's footprints
leading from the stable path over the wet sod
to the road. There were only one or two of
these prints in the damp places below the
spring, but they were fresh, and made by a
foot smaller far than the wide one of old Simon
Betts.

We f'oUowed Ump to the road. A horse
had been hitched to the " rider" of the rail

56 Dwellers in the Hills

fence, and there were his tracks stamped in the
hard clay. There was not light enough to see
very clearly, so we struck matches and got
down on the bank to study the details of the
tracks. I saw that the horse had been one of
medium size, — a saddle horse, shod with a
" store " shoe, remodelled by some smith.
But this knowledge gave no especial light.

Ump and Jud lay on their bellies with their
noses to the earth searching the shoe marks.
" It 's no use," I said, " we can't tell." And
I sat up. The two neither answered nor paid
the slightest attention. No bacteriologist
plodding in his eccentric orbit ever studied
the outlines of a new-found germ with deeper
or more painstaking care. Presently they
began to compare their discoveries.

** He was a Hambletonian," began Jud;
** don't you see how long the shoe is from the
toe to the cork ? " Ump nodded. *' An' he
was curbed," Jud went on; '* his feet set too
close under him fer a straight-legged horse.
Still, that ain't enough."

" Put this to it," said the hunchback, ** an'
you 've got your hand on him. Them 's store

The Waggon-Maker 57

nails hammered into a store shoe, an' the corks
are beat squat. That 's Stone's shoein'.
Now you know him,"

Then I knew him too. Lem Marks rode a
curbed Hambletonian, and Stone was Wood*
ford's blacksmith.

Jud got up and waved his great hand to-
wards the south country.

" They 're all ridin'," he said, " every
mother's son of the gang. An' they know
where we arc."

" With rings on their fingers, an' bells on
their toes," gabbled Ump; " an' we know
where they are."

Then I heard the voice of the old waggon-
maker calling us to breakfast.

CHAPTER VI

THE MAID AND THE INTRUDERS

THERE are mornings that cling in the
memory like a face caught for a moment
in some crowded street and lost; mornings
when no cloud curtains the doorway of the
sun ; when the snafHe-chains rattle sharp in
the crisp air and the timber cracks in the frost.
They are good to remember when the wrist
has lost its power and the bridle-fingers stiffen,
and they are clear with a mystic clearness,
the elders say, when one is passing to the
ghosts.

It was such a morning when I stood in the
doorway of the old waggon-maker's house.
The light was driving the white fogs into the
north. A cool, sweet air came down from the
wooded hill, laden with the smell of the beech

58

The Maid and the Intruders 59

leaves, and the little people of the bushes were
beginning to tumble out of their beds.

We asked old Simon if he had heard a horse
in the night, and he replied that he had heard
one stop for a few moments a little before
dawn and presently pass on up the road in a
trot. Doubtless, he insisted, the rider had
dismounted for a drink of his celebrated spring
water. We kept our own counsels. If the
henchmen of Woodford hunted water in the
early morning, it would be, in the opinion of
Ump, '* when the cows come home."

We went over every inch of the horses from
their hocks to their silk noses, and every stitch
of our riding gear, to be sure that no deviltry
had been done. But we found nothing. Evi-
dently Marks was merely spying out the land.
Then we led the horses out for the journey.
£1 Mahdi had to duck his head to get under
the low doorway. It was good to see him
sniff the cool air, his coat shining like a maid's
ribbons, and then rise on his hind legs and
strike out at nothing for the sheer pleasure of
being alive on this October day. And it was
good to see him plunge his head up to the

6o Dwellers in the Hills

eyepits into the sparkling water and gulp it
down, and then blow the clinging drops out of
his nostrils.

El Mahdiy if beyond the stars somewhere in
those other Hills of the Undying I am not to
find you, I shall not care so very greatly if the
last sleep be as dreamless as the wise have
sometimes said it is.

I spread the thick saddle-blanket and pulled
it out until it touched his grey withers, and
taking the saddle by the horn swung it up on
his back, straightened the skirts and drew the
two girths tight, one of leather and one of
hemp web. Then I climbed into the saddle,
and we rode out under the apple trees.

Simon Betts stood in his door as we went
by, and called us a ** God speed." Straight,
honourable old man. He was a lantern in the
Hills. He was good to me when I was little,
and he was good to Ward. In the place where
he is gone, may the Lord be good to him !

We stopped to open the old gate, an ancient
landmark of the early time, made of locust
poles, and swinging to a long beam that rested
on a huge post in perfect balance. Easily

The Maid and the Intruders 6i

pushed open, it closed of its own weight. A
gate of striking artistic fitness, now long
crumbled with the wooden plough and the
quaint pack-saddles of the tall grandsires.

We rode south in the early daylight. Jud
whistled some old song the words of which
told about a jolly friar who could not eat the
fattest meat because his stomach was not first
class, but believed he could drink with any
man in the Middle Ages, — a song doubtless
learned at Roy's tavern when the Queens and
the Alkires and the Coopmans of the up-
country got too much ** spiked " cider under
their waistbands. I heard it first, and others
of its kidney, on the evening that old Hiram
Arnold bet his saddle against a twenty-dollar
gold piece, that he could divide ninety cattle
so evenly that there would not be fifty pounds
difference in weight between the two droves,
and did it, and with the money bought the
tavern dry. And the crowd toasted him :

t(

Here 's to those who have half joes, and have a

heart to spend 'em ;
But damn those who have whole joes, and have

no heart to spend 'em."

62 Dwellers in the Hills

On that night, in my youthful eyes, old
Hiram was a hero out of the immortal Iliad.

We passed few persons on that golden morn-
ing. I remember a renter riding his plough
horse in its ploughing gears; great wooden
hames, broad breeching, and rusty trace chains
rattling and clanking with every stride of the
heavy horse; the renter in his patched and
mud-smeared clothes, — work-harness too. A
genius might have painted him and gotten into
his picture the full measure of relentless des-
tiny and the abominable indifference of nature.

Still it was not the man, but the horse, that
suggested the tremendous question. One felt
that somehow the man could change his sta-
tion if he tried, but the horse was a servant of
servants, under man and under nature. The
broad, kindly, obedient face! It was enough
to break a body's heart to sit still and look
down into it. No trace of doubt or rebellion
or complaint, only an appealing meekness as
of one who tries to do as well as he can under-
stand. Great simple-hearted slave ! How will
you answer when your master is judged by the
King of Kings ? How will he explain away

The Maid and the Intruders 63

his brutality to you when at last One shall say
to him, ** Why are these marks on the body of
my servant ? *'

The Good Book tells us on many a page
how, when we meet him, we shall know the
righteous, but nowhere does it tell more clearly
than where it says, he is merciful to his beast.
In the Hills there was no surer way to find
trouble than to strike the horse of the cattle-
drover. I have seen an indolent blacksmith
booted across his shop because he kicked a
horse on the leg to make him hold his foot up.
And I have seen a lout's head broken because
the master caught him swearing at a horse.

As we rode, the day opened, and leaf and
grass blade glistened with the melting frost.
The partridge called to his mate across the
fields. The ground squirrel, in his striped
coat, hurried along the rail fence, bobbing in
and out as though he were terribly late for
some important engagement. The blackbirds
in great flocks swung about above the corn
fields, manoeuvring like an army, and now and
then a crow shouted in his pirate tongue as he
steered westward to a higher hill-top.

64 Dwellers in the Hills

All the people of the earth were about their
business on this October morning. Some-
times an urchin passed us on his way to the
grist mill, astride a bag of com, riding some
ancient patriarchal horse which, out of a wis-
dom of years, refused to mend his gait for all
the kicking of the urchin's naked heels. And
we hailed him for a cavalier.

Sometimes a pair of oxen, one red, one
white, clanked by, dragging, hooked in the
yoke-ring, a log chain that made a jerky trail
in the road, like the track of a broken-backed
snake, and we spoke to the driver, inquiring
which one was the saddle horse, and if the
team worked single of a Sunday. And he
answered with some laughing jeer that set us
shaking in our saddles.

We had passed the flat lands, and were half
way up Thornberg's Hill, a long gentle
slope, covered with vines and underbrush and
second-growth poplar saplings, when I heard a
voice break out in a merry carol, — a voice free,
careless, bubbling with the joy of golden
youth, that went laughing down the hillside
like the voice of the happiest bird that was

The Maid and the Intruders 65

ever born. It rang and echoed in the vibrant
morning, and we laughed aloud as we caught
the words of it :

" Can she bake a cherry pie, Billy Boy, Billy Boy ?
Can she bake a cherry pie, charming Billy ?
She can bake a cherry pie quick as a cat can

wink its eye.
She 's a young thing and can't leave her mother."

It required splendid audacity to fling such
rippling nonsense at the feathered choirs in
the sassafras thickets, biit they were all listen-
ing with the decorous attitude of a conven-
tional audience. I marked one dapper catbird,
perched on a poplar limb, who cocked his head
and heard the singer through, and then made
that almost imperceptible gesture with which
a great critic indicates his approval of a novice.
** Not half bad," he seemed to say, — this blas^
old habit u^ of the thicket music-halls. '* I
should n't wonder if something could be made
of that voice if it were trained a trifle."

We broke into a trot and, rounding a corner
of the wood, came upon the singer. She was
a stripling of a girl in a butternut frock, stand-
ing bolt upright on a woman's saddle, tugging
5

66 Dwellers in the Hills

away at a tangle of vines, her mouth stained
purple with the big fox-grapes, her round
white arms bare to the elbows, and a pink
calico sun-bonnet dangling on her shoulders,
held only by the broad strings around her
throat.

The horse under her was smoking wet to the
fetlocks. This piping miss had been stretch-
ing his legs for him. It was Patsy, a madcap
protegee of Cynthia Carper, the biggest tom-
boy that ever climbed a tree or ran a saddle-
horse into ** kingdom come." She slipped
down into the saddle when she saw us, and
flung her grapes away into the thicket. We
stopped in the turnpike opposite to the cross
road in which her horse was standing and
hailed her with a laugh.

She looked us over with the dimples chang-
ing around her funny mouth. ** You are a
mean lot," she said, ''to be laughing at a
lady."

" We are not laughing at a lady," I an-
swered; ** we *re laughing at the fun your
horse has been having. He 's tickled to
death."

<4

The Maid and the Intruders 67

'* Well," she said, looking down at the
steaming horse, ** I had to get here."

'* You had to get here? " I echoed. "Good-
ness alive! Nobody but a girl would run a
horse into the thumps to get anywhere."

*' Stupid," she said, *' I 've just had to get
here, — there, I did n't mean that. I meant I
had to get where I was going."

'* You were in a terrible hurry a moment
ago," said I.

The horse had to rest," she pouted.
You might have thought of that," I said,
** a little earlier in your seven miles' run."
Then I laughed. The idea of resting the horse
was so delicious that Ump and Jud laughed
too.

The horse's knees were trembling and his
sides puffing like a bellows. Here was Brown
Rupert, the fastest horse in the Carper stable,
a horse that Cynthia guarded as a man might
guard the ball of his eye, run literally off his
legs by this devil-may-care youngster. I would
have wagered my saddle against a sheepskin
that she had started Brown Rupert on the
jump from the horse-block and held him to a

68 Dwellers in the Hills

gallop over every one of those seven blessed
miles.

*' Well," she said, " are you going to ride
on ? Or are you going to sit there like a lot
of grinning hoodlums ? "

Ump pulled off his hat and swept a laugh-
able bow over his saddle horn. ** Where are
you goin', my pretty maid ? " he chuckled.

She straightened in the saddle, then dropped
him a courtesy as good as he had sent, and
answered, ** Fair sir, I ride 'cross country on
my own business." And she gathered up the
bridle in her supple little hand.

Jud laughed until the great thicket roared
with the echo. Sir Questioner had caught it
on the jaw.

** My dear Miss Touch-me-not," I put in,
" let me give you a piece of advice. That
horse is winded. If you start him on the
gallop, you *I1 burst him."

She lifted her chin and looked me in the
eye. *' A thousand thank you's," she said,
** and for advice to you, sir, don't believe any-
thing you hear." Then she turned Brown
Rupert and rode down the way she had come.

The Maid and the Intruders 69

sitting as straight in the saddle as an empress.
For a moment the sunlight filtering through
the poplar branches made queer mottled spots
of gold on her curly head, then the trees closed
in, and we lost her.

I doubled over the pommel of my saddle
and laughed until my sides ached. Jud slap-
ped his big hand on the leg of his breeches.
" I hope I may die! " he ejaculated. It was
his mightiest idiom. But the crooked Ump
was as solemn as a lord. He sat looking down
his nose.

I turned to him when I got a little breath in
me. '' Don't be glum," I said. ** The little
spitfire is an angel. You 're not hurt."

The hunchback rubbed his chin. "Quiller,"
he said, ''don't the Bible tell about a man that
met an angel when he was a goin' some-
where ? "

Yes," I laughed.

What was that man's name ? " said he.
Balaam," said I.

Well," said he, ** that man Balaam was
the second ass that saw an angel, an' you 're
the third one."

<<

4*

1 1

*i

CHAPTER VII

THE MASTER BUILDERS

THE road running into the south lands
crosses the Valley River at two places,
— at the foot of Thornberg's Hill and twenty
miles farther on at Horton's Ferry. At the
first crossing, the river bed is piled with
boulders, and the river boils through, running
like a millrace, a swift, roaring water without
a ford. At Horton's Ferry the river runs
smooth and wide and deep, a shining sheet of
clear water, making a mighty bend, still ford-
less, but placid enough to be crossed by a
ferry, running with a heavy current when swol-
len by the rains, except in the elbow of the
bend where it swings into a tremendous eddy.
Over the river, where the road meets it first,

is a huge wooden bridge with one span. It is

70

. The Master Builders 71

giant work, the stone abutment built out a
hundred feet on either side into the bed of the
plunging water, neither rail nor wall flanking
this stone causeway, but the bare unguarded
width of the road-bed leading up into the
bridge.

On the lips of the abutment, the builders set
two stone blocks, smooth and wide, and cut
places in them for the bridge timbers. It was
a piece of excellent judgment, since the great
stones could not be broken from the abut-
ment, and they were mighty enough to bear
the weight of a mountain. The bridge rests
on three sills, each a log that, unhewn, must
have taken a dozen oxen to drag it. I have
often wondered at the magnitude of this
labour ; how these logs were thrown across
the boiling water by any engines known to the
early man. It was a work for Pharaoh. On
these three giant sleepers the big floor was
laid, the walls raised, and the whole roofed, so
that it was a covered road over the Valley.

The shingle roof and the boarded sides pro-
tected the timber framework from the beating
of the elements. Dry, save for the occasional

72 Dwellers in the Hills

splash of the hissing water far below, the g^reat
bones of this bridge hardened and lasted like
sills of granite. The shingle roof curledyCracked,
and dropped off into the water ; the floor broke
through, the sides rotted, and were all replaced
again and again. But the powerful grandsires
who had come down from the Hills to lay a
floor over the Valley were not intending to do
that work again, and went about their labour
like the giants of old times.

Indeed, a legend runs that these sills were
not laid by men at all, but by the Dwarfs. As
evidence of this folklore tale, it is pointed out
that these logs have the mark of a rough turtle
burned on their under surface like the turtle
cut on the great stones in the mountains.
And men differ about what wood they are of,
some declaring them to be oak and others
sugar, and still others a strange wood of which
the stumps only are now found in the Hills.
It is true that no mark of axe can be found on
them, but this is no great wonder since the
bark was evidently removed by burning, an
ancient method of preserving the wood from
rot.

The Master Builders 73

We swung down Thornberg's Hill in a long
trot, and on to the bridge. The river was
swollen, a whirling mass of yellow water that
surged and pounded and howled under the
timber floor as though the mad spirits of the
river still resented the work of the Dwarfs. It
was the Valley's business to divide the land,
and it had done it well, leaving the sons of Eve
to bite their fingers until, on a night, the
crooked people came stumbling down to take
a hand in the matter.

We clattered through, and down a long
abutment. It almost made one dizzy to look
over. A rail or a tree limb would ride down
into this devil's maw, or a log would come
swimmingy its back bobbing in the muddy
water, and then strike the smooth nose of a
boulder and go to splinters.

Beyond the mad river the mild morning
world was a land of lazy quiet. The sky was
as blue as a woman's eye, and the sun rose
clear in his flaming cart. Along the roadside
the little purple flowers of autumn peeped
about under the green briers. The fields were
shaggy with ragweed and dead whitetop and

74 Dwellers in the Hills

yellow sedge. The walnut and the apple trees
were bare, and the tall sycamore stood naked
in its white skin. Sometimes a heron flapped
across the land, taking a short cut to a lower
water, or a woodpecker dived from the tall
timber, or there boomed from the distant
wooded hollow the drum of some pheasant
lover, keeping a forgotten tryst.

It was now two hours of midday, and the
October sun was warm. Tiny streaks of damp-
ness were beginning to appear on the sleek
necks of the Cardinal and El Mahdi, and the
Bay Eagle was swinging her head, a clear sign
that the good mare was not entirely comfort-
able.

I turned to Ump. ** There 's something
wrong with that bridle," I said. '* Either the
brow-band or the throat-latch. The mare's
fidgety."

He looked at me in astonishment, like a man
charged suddenly with a crime, and slid his
long hand out under her slim throat, and over
her silk foretop; th«n he growled. "You
don't know your A, B, C's, Quiller. She
wants water; that *s alL"

The Master Builders 75

Jud grinned like a bronzed Bacchus. ** The
queen might wear Spanish needles in her
shirt/' he said, '' an' be damned. But the
Bay Eagle will never wear a tight throat-latch
or a pinchin' brow-band, or a rough bit, or a
short headstall, while old Mr. Ump warms the
saddle seat."

The hunchback was squirming around, cran-
ing his long neck. If the Bay Eagle were dry,
water must be had, and no delay about it.
Love for this mare was Ump's religion. I
laughed and pointed down the road. ** We
are almost at Aunt Peggy's house. Don't
stop to dig a well." And we broke into a
gallop.

Aunt Peggy was one of the ancients, a carpet-
weaver, pious as Martin Luther, but a trifle
liberal with her idioms. The tongue in her
head wagged like a bell-clapper. Whatever
was whispered in the Hills got somehow into
Aunt Peggy's ears, and once there it went to
the world like the secret of Midas.

If one wished to publish a bit of gossip, he
told Aunt Peggy, swore her to secrecy, and
rode away. But as there is often a point of

76 Dwellers in the Hills

honour about the thief and a whim of the Puri-
tan about the immoral. Aunt Peggy could
never be brought to say who it was that told
her. One could inquire as one pleased. The
old woman ran no farther than ** Them as
knows. ' ' And there it ended and you might
be damned.

The house was a log cottage covered with
shingles and whitewash, set by the roadside
under a great chestnut tree, its door always
open in the daytime. As we drew rein by this
open door, the old woman dropped her shuttle,
tossed her ball of carpet rags over into the
weaving frame, and came stumbling to the
threshold in her long linsey dress that fell
straight from her neck to the floor.

She pulled her square-rimmed spectacles
down on her nose and squinted up at us.
When she saw me, she started back and
dropped her hands. "Great fathers!" she
ejaculated, ** I hope I may go to the blessed
God if it ain't Quiller gaddin' over the country,
an' Mister Ward a-dyin'."

It seemed to me that the earth lurched as it
swung, and every joint in my body went limber

The Master Builders ^^

as a rag. I caught at EI Mahdi's mane, then
I felt Jud's arm go round me, and heard Ump
talking at my ear. But they were a long dis-
tance away. I heard instead the bees droning,
and Ward's merry laugh, as he carried me on
his shoulder a babbling youngster in a little
white kilt. It was only an instant, but in it
all the good days when I was little and Ward
was father and mother and Providence, raced
by.

Then I heard Ump. ** It 's a lie, Quiller, a
damn lie. Don't you remember what Patsy
said ? Not to believe anything you hear ?
Do you think she ran that horse to death for
nothin' ? It was to tell you, to git to you
first before Woodford's lie got to you. Don't
you see ? Oh, damn Woodford ! Don't you
see the trick, boy ? "

Then I saw. My heart gave a great thump.
The sunlight poured in and I was back in the
road by the old carpet-weaver's cottage.

The old woman was alarmed, but her curios-
ity held like a cable.

** What 's he sayin'," she piped; " what 's
he sayin' ? "

<<

<<

78 Dwellers in the Hills

** That it 's all a lie, Aunt Peggy," replied
Jud.

She turned her squint eyes on him. ** Who
told you so ? "she said.

Who told you ? " growled Ump.
Them as knows," she said. And the
cujiosity piped in her voice. ** Did they lie ? "

" They did," said Ump; '' Mister Ward 's
hurt, but he ain't dangerous."

** Bless my life," cried the old woman, ** an'
they lied, did they ? I think a liar is the
meanest thing the Saviour died for. They
said Mister Ward was took sudden with blood
poison last night, an' a-dyin', the scalawags!
I '11 dress 'em down when I git my eyes on

em.

a

Who were they. Aunt Peggy? " I ventured.

She made a funny gesture with her elbows,
and then shook her finger at me. ** You know
I can't tell that, Quiller," she piped, ** but the
blessed God knows, an' I hope He '11 tan their
hides for 'em."

" I know, too," said Ump.

The old woman leaned out of the door.
'' Hey ? " she said ; " what 's that ? You

The Master Builders 79

know ? Then maybe you '11 tell why they
come a-lyin'."

" Can you keep a secret ? " said Ump, lean-
ing down from his saddle.

The old woman's face lighted. She put her
hand to her ear and craned her neck like a
turtle. " Yes," she said, '' I can that."

** So can I," said Ump.

The old carpet-weaver snorted. ** Humph, "
she said, ** when you git dry behind the ears
you won't be so peart." Then she waved her
hand to me. ** Light off," she said, ** an* rest
your critters, an* git a tin of drinkin' water.**

After this invitation she went back to her
half-woven carpet with its green chain and its
copperas-coloured widths, and we presently
heard the hum of the wooden shuttle and the
bang of the loom frame. We rode a few steps
farther to the well, and Jud dismounted to
draw the water. The appliance for lifting the
bucket was .of the most primitive type. A
post with a forked top stood planted in the
ground. In this fork rested a long, slender
sapling with a heavy butt, and from the
small end, high in the air, hung a slim pole.

8o Dwellers in the Hills

to the lower end of which the bucket was
tied.

Jud grasped the pole and lowered the bucket
into the well, and then, while one watched by
the door, the others watered the horses in the
old carpet-weaver's bucket. It was the only
thing to drink from, and if Aunt Peggy had
caught u^ with the ** critters* " noses in it we
should doubtless have come in for a large
share of that ** dressing down " which she was
reserving for Lemuel Marks.

She came to the door as we were about to
ride away and looked over the sweaty horses.
** Sakes alive,** she said, ** you little whelps
ride like Jehu. You '11 git them horses
ga*nted before you know it."

** You can*t ga*nt a horse if he sweats
good," said Ump; *' but if he don*t sweat,
you can ga'nt him into fiddle strings.*'

**They 're pretty critters," said the old wom-
an, running her eyes over the three horses.
" Be they Mister Ward's ? "

** We all be Mister Ward's," answered
Ump, screwing his mouth to one side and
imitating the old carpet-weaver's voice.

The Master Builders 8i

<<

Bless my life/' said the old woman, look-
ing us up and down, '' Mister Ward has a fine
chance of scalawags."

We laughed and the old woman's face
wrinkled into smiles. Then she turned to me.
** Which way did you come, Quiller ?" she
asked.

** Over the bridge," said I. Now there was
no other way to come, and the old carpet-
weaver turned the counter with shrewd good-
nature.

** Maybe you know how the bridge got
there," she said.

** I 've heard that the Dwarfs built it," said
I, *' but I reckon it 's talk."

" Well, it ain't talk," said the old woman.
** A long time ago, folks lived on the other
side of the river, and the Dwarfs lived on this
side, an' the folks tried to git acrost, but they
could n't, an' they talked to the Dwarfs over
the river, an' asked them to build a bridge,
an' the Dwarfs said they could n't build it unless
the river devils was bought off. Then the folks
asked how to buy off them river devils, an* the
Dwarfs said to throw in a thimble full of human

82 Dwellers in the Hills

blood an' spit in the river. So, one night the
folks done it, an' next morning them logs was
acrost."

The spectacles of the old woman were fas-
tened around her head with a shoestring. She
removed them by lifting the shoestring over
her head, polished them for a moment on her
linsey dress and set them back on her nose.

** Then," she went on, *' the devilment was
done. Just like it allers is when people gits
smarter than the blessed God. The Dwarfs
crost over an' rid the horses in the night an'
sucked the cows, an' made faces at the women
so the children was cross-eyed. An' the folks
tried to throw down the bridge an' could n't
do it because the Dwarfs had put a spell on
them logs."

She stopped and jerked her thumb toward
the river. ** Did you ever hear tell of old
Jimmy Radcliff ? " she asked.

We had heard of the old-time millwright,
and said so.

'* Well," she went on, ** they was a-layin' a
floor in that bridge oncet, an' old Jimmy got
tight on b'iled cider, an' 'low'd he 'd turn one

The Master Builders 83

of them logs over. So he chucked a crowbar
under one of 'em an' begun a-pryin', an' all at
oncet that crowbar flew out of his hand an' old
Jimmy fell through, an' the men cotched him
by his wampus an' it took four of 'em to pull
him up, because, they said, it felt like some-
thin' was a-holdin* his legs."

** I reckon," said Ump, ** it was the cider in
Jimmy's legs. If there had been anything
holdin', they could have seen it."

** 'T ain't so certain," said Aunt Peggy,
wagging her head, ** 't ain't so certain. There 's
many a thing a-holdin' in the world that you
can't see." And she turned around in the
door and went stumping back to her loom.

We rode south in no light-hearted mood.
Again we had met the far-sighted cunning of
Hawk Rufe, in a trap baited by a master, and
had slipped from under it by no skill of ours.
Had we missed those last words of Patsy,
flung back like an angry taunt, I should have
believed the tale about my brother and hurried
north, if all the cattle in the Hills had gone to
the devil. It was a master move, that lie, and
I began to see the capacity of these dangerous

84 Dwellers in the Hills

men. This was merely an outpost strategy,
laid as they passed along. What would it be
when we came to the serious business of the
struggle _?

And how came that girl on Thornberg's
Hill 7 Cynthia was shoulder to shoulder with
Woodford. We had seen that with our own
eyes. Had Patsy turned traitor to Cynthia ?

I looked over at Ump. " What did that
little girl mean ? " I said.

" I give it up," said he.

" I don't understand women," said I.

" If you did," said he, " they 'd have you
in a side-show."

CHAPTER VIII

SOME REMARKS OF SAINT PAUL

A GREAT student of men has written
somewhere about the fear that hovers at
the threshold of events. And a great essayist,
in a dozen lines, as clean-cut as the work of a
gem engraver, marks the idleness of that fear
when above the trembling one are only the
gods, — he alone, with them alone.

The first great man is seeing right, we know.
The other may be also seeing right, but few of
us are tall enough to see with him, though we
stand a-tiptoe. We sleep when we have looked
upon the face of the threatening, but we sleep
not when it crouches in the closet of the to-
morrow. Men run away before the battle
opens, who would charge first under its boom-
ing, and men faint before the surgeon begins

85

86 Dwellers in the Hills

to cut, who never whimper after the knife has
gone through the epidermis. It is the fear of
the dark.

It sat with me on the crupper as we rode
into Roy's tavern. Marks and Peppers and
the club-footed Malan were all moving some-
where in our front. Hawk Rufe was not in-
tending to watch six hundred black cattle filing
into his pasture with thirty dollars lost on
every one of their curly heads. Fortune had
helped him hugely, or he had helped himself
hugely, and this was all a part of the struc-
ture of his plan. Ward out of the way
first! Accident it might have been, design
I believed it was. Yet, upon my life,
with my prejudice against him I could not
say.

That we could not tell the whims of chance
from the plans of Woodford was the best testi-
monial to this man's genius. One moved a
master when he used the hands of Providence
to lift his pieces. The accident to Ward was
clear accident, to hear it told. At the lower
falls of the Gauley, the road home runs close
to the river and is rough and narrow. On the

Some Remarks of Saint Paul 87

opposite side the deep laurel thickets reach
from the hill-top to the water. Here, in the
roar of the falls, the Black Abbot had fallen
suddenly, throwing Ward down the embank-
ment. It was a thing that might occur any day
in the Hills. The Black Abbot was a bad
horse, and the prediction was common that he
would kill Ward some day. But there was
something about this accident that was not
clear. Mean as his fame put him, the Black
Abbot had never been known to fall in all of
his vicious life. On his right knee there was a
great furrow, long as a man's finger and torn
at one corner. It was scarcely the sort of
wound that the edge of a stone would make
on a falling horse.

Ump and Jud and old Jourdan examined this
wound for half a night, and finally declared
that the horse had been shot. They pointed
out that this was the furrow of a bullet, be-
cause hair was carried into the wound, and
nothing but a bullet carries the hair with it.
The fibres of the torn muscle were all forced
one way, a characteristic of the track of a bul-
let, and the edge of the wound on the inside

88 Dwellers in the Hills

of the horse's knee was torn. This was the
point from which a bullet, if fired from the
opposite side of the river, would emerge ; and
it is well known that a bullet tears as it comes
out. At least this is always true with a muz-
zle-loading rifle. Ward expressed no opinion.
He only drew down his dark eyebrows when
the three experts went in to tell him, and di-
rected them to swing Black Abbot in his stall,
and bandage the knee. But I talked with
Ump about it, and in the light of these after
events it was tolerably clear.

At this point of the road, the roar of the falls
would entirely drown the report of a rifle, and
the face o^ any convenient rock would cover
the flash. The graze of a bullet on the knee
would cause any horse to fall, and if he fell
here, the rider was almost certain to sustain
some serious injury if he were not killed.
True, it was a piece of good shooting at fifty
yards, but both Peppers and Malan could
** bark " a squirrel at that distance.

If this were the first move in Woodford's
elaborate plan, then there was trouble ahead,
and plenty of trouble. The horses came to a

Some Remarks of Saint Paul 89

walk at a little stream below Roy*s tavern,
and we rode up slowly.

The tavern was a long, low house with a
great porch, standing back in a well-sodded
yard. We dismounted, tied the horses to the
fence, and crossed the path to the house. As
I approached, I heard a voice say, ** If the
other gives 'em up, old Nicholas won't. " Then
I lifted the latch and flung the door open.

I stopped with my foot on the threshold.
At the table sat Lem Marks, his long, thin legs
stretched out, and his hat over his eyes. On
the other side was Malan and, sitting on the
corner of the table, drinking cider from a stone
pitcher, was Parson Peppers, — the full brood.

The Parson replaced the pitcher and wiped
his dripping mouth on his sleeve. Then he
burst out in a loud guffaw. *' I quote Saint
Paul," he cried. ** Do thyself no harm, for
we are all here."

Marks straightened in his chair like a cat,
and the little eyes of Malan slipped around in
his head. For a moment, I was undecided,
but Ump pushed through and I followed him
into the room.

90 Dwellers in the Hills

There was surprise and annoyance in Marks's
face for a moment. Then it vanished like a
shadow and he smiled pleasantly. " You 're
late to dinner," he said; ** perhaps you were
not expected."

" I think," said I, " that we were not ex-
pected, but we have come."

'' I see," said Marks.

Peppers broke into a hoarse laugh and
clapped his hand on Marks's shoulder. " You
see, do you ?" he roared ; " you see now, my
laddie. Did n't I tell you that you could n't
stop runnin' water with talk ? "

The suggestion was dangerously broad, and
Marks turned it. "I recall," he said, " no
conversation with you about running water.
That cider must be up in your hair."

** Lemuel, my boy," said the jovial Peppers,
" the Lord killed Ananias for lyin' an' you
don't look strong."

" I 'm strong enough to keep my mouth
shut," snapped Marks.

" Fiddle-de-dee," said Peppers, " the Lord
has sometimes opened an ass's mouth when
He wanted to."

Some Remarks of Saint Paul 91

** He did n't have to open it in your case,**
said Marks.

** But He will have to shut it in my case/'
replied Peppers; " you 're a little too light for
the job/'

The cider was reaching pretty well into the
Reverend Peppers. This Marks saw, and he
was too shrewd to risk a quarrel. He burst
into a laugh. Peppers began to hammer the
table with his stone pitcher and call for Roy.

The tavern-keeper came in a moment, a short
little man with a weary smile. Peppers tossed
him the pitcher. " Fill her up," he roared,
" I follow the patriarch Noah. He was the
only one of the whole shootin' match who
stood in with the Lord, an' he got as drunk
as a b'iled owl."

Then he turned to us. " Will you have a
swig, boys ? "

We declined, and he struck the table with
his fist. " Ho! ho," he roared; ** is every
shingle on the meetin'-house dry ? " Then he
marked the hunchback sitting by the wall, and
pointed his finger at him. " Come, there, you
camel, wet your hump."

92 Dwellers in the Hills

That a fight was on, I had not the slightest
doubt in the world. I caught my breath in a
gasp. I saw Jud loosen his arm in his coat-
sleeve. Ump was as sensitive as any cripple,
and he was afraid of no man. To my astonish-
ment he smiled and waved his hand. *' I 'm
cheek to your jowl, Parson," he said; '* set
out the 0-be- joyful."

" Hey, Roy! " called Peppers, " bring an-
other pitcher for Humpty Dumpty." Then
he kicked the table with his great cowhide
boots and began to bellow :

" Zaccheus he clum a tree
His Lord an* Master for to see ;
The limb did break an' he did fall,
An* he did n't git to see his Lord at all."

Ump and I were seated by the wall, tilted
back in the tavern-keeper's split-bottom chairs,
while Jud leaned against the door.

The rhyme set the Parson's head to hum-
ming, and he began to pat his leg. Then he
spied Jud. " Hey, there! Beelzebub," he
roared, ** can you dust the puncheons ? "

'• When the devil 's a-fiddlin'," said Jud.

" Ho, the devil," hummed the Parson.

Some Remarks of Saint Paul 93

" As I set fiddlin' on a tree
The devil shot his gun at me.
He missed my soul an' hit a limb.
An* I don't give a damn for him."

He slapped his leg to emphasise the * * damn. ' '
At this moment Roy came in with the two
stone pitchers, handed one to Ump and put
the other down by the boisterous Parson.

Peppers turned to him. " Got a fiddle ?"
he asked.

' ' I think there 's an old stager about, ' ' said
Roy.

" Bring her in," said Peppers. Then he
seized the pitcher by its stone handle and raised
it in the air. ** Wine 's a mocker," he began,
" an' strong drink is ragin', but old Saint Paul
said, * A little for your stomach's sake.'
Here 's lookin' at you, Humpty Dumpty.
May you grow until your ears drag the
ground."

The hunchback lifted his pitcher. " Same
to you. Parson," he said, *' an' all your
family." Then they thrust their noses into
the stone pitchers. Peppers gulped a swallow,
then he lowered his pitcher and looked at Ump.

it

t*

94 Dwellers in the Hills

** Humpty Dumpty/' he said, speaking slow-
ly and turning down his thumb as he spoke,
'* when you git your fall, it '11 be another job
for them king's horses."

" Parson," said Ump, ** I know how to
light."

How ? ' ' said Peppers.
Easy," said Ump.

Peppers roared. ** You ain't learned it any
too quick," he said. " What goes up, has got
to come down, an' you 're goin' up end over
appetite."

"When do a hit the ground. Parson?"
asked Ump, with his nose in the pitcher.

Peppers spread out two of his broad fingers.
** To-day is to-day," he said, "an' to-morrow
is to-morrow. Then — " But the cunning
Marks was on his feet before the sentence was
finished.

" Peppers," he snapped, *' you clatter like
a feed-cutter. What are you tryin' to say ?
Out with it. Let 's hear it."

It was a bold effort to throw us off the scent.
Peppers saw the lead, and for a moment he
was sober.

Some Remarks of Saint Paul 95

" I was a-warnin' the lost sinner," he said,
" like Jonah warned the sinners in Nineveh.
I 'm exhortin' him about the fall. Adam fell
in the Garden of Eden." Then the leer came
back into his face. " Ever hear of the Garden
of Eden, Lemuel ? "

** Yes," said Marks, glad to divert the
dangerous drunkard.

** You ought," said Peppers. ** Your grand-
pap was there, eatin' dirt an' crawlin' on his
belly."

We roared, and while the tavern was still
shaking with it, Roy came in carrying an old
and badly battered fiddle under his arm.
'* Boys," he said timidly, " furse all you want
to, but don't start nothin'." Then he gave
the fiddle to Peppers, and came over to where
we were seated. ** Quiller," he said, ** I
reckon you all want a bite o' dinner."

I answered that we did. " Well," he apolo-
gised, ** we did n't have your name in the pot,
but we *11 dish you up something, an' you can
give it a lick an* a promise." Then he
gathered up some empty dishes from a table
and went out.

96 Dwellers in the Hills

Peppers was thumping the fiddle strings with
his thumb, and screwing up the keys. His
sense of melody was in a mood to overlook
many a defect, and he presently thrust the
fiddle under his chin and began to saw it.
Then he led ofl with a bellow,

" Come all ye merry maidens an* listen unto me."

But the old fiddle was unaccustomed to so
vigorous a virtuoso, and its bridge fell with a
bang. The Parson blurted an expletive, in-
flected like the profane. Then he straightened
the bridge, gave the fiddle a tremendous saw,
and resumed his bellow. But with the acci-
dent, his first tune had gone glimmering, and
he dropped to another with the agility of an
acrobat.

" In eighteen hundred an* sixty-five
I thought I was quite lucky to find myself alive.
I saddled up old Bald Face my business to

pursue,
An* I went to drivin' steers as I used for to do."

The fiddle was wofuUy out of tune, and it
rasped and screeched and limped like a spavined

Some Remarks of Saint Paul 97

colt, but the voice of Peppers went ahead with
the bellow.

" But the stillhouse bein' close an* the licker
bein' free
I took to the licker, an* the licker took to me.
I took to the licker, till I reeled an' I fell,
An' the whole cussed drove went a-trailin' off to
hell."

Ump arose and waved his pitcher. *' Hold
up, Parson," he said. " Here 's to them
merry maids that got lost in the shuffle.
*T ain't like you to lose 'em."

The suggestion was timely. The song ran
to fifty-nine verses, and no others printable.

Peppers dropped the fiddle and seized the
pitcher. " Correct,'* he roared. ** Here 's
to 'em. May the Lord bless *em, an' bind
'em, an' tie their hands behind 'em, an' put
'em in a place where the devil can't find 'em."

** Nor you," mumbled Ump in the echo.

They drank, and the hunchback eyed his
man over the rim of the pitcher. The throat
of the Parson did not move. It was clear that
Peppers had reached the danger line, and, what
was fatal to the plan of Ump, he knew it. He

7

98 Dwellers in the Hills

was shamming. The eyes of the hunchback
squinted an instant, and then hardened in his
face.

He lowered his pitcher, took a step nearer to
the table, and clashed it against the Parson's
pitcher. ** The last one," he said, " to Mister
Ward, God bless 'im ! "

It was plain that the hunchback having failed
to drink Peppers maudlin, was now deliber-
ately provoking a fight. The bloated face of
the Parson grew purple.
Woodford ! " he roared.
I said," repeated Ump slowly, " to Mister
Ward. An* his enemies, may the devil fly
away with *em."

Peppers hurled down his pitcher, and it
broke into a thousand pieces on the oak floor.
I saw the hunchback's eyes blink. I saw Jud
take a step towards Peppers, but he was too
late. Lem Marks made a sign to Malan. The
club-footed giant bounded on Peppers, pinned
his arms to his sides, and lifting him from the
table carried him toward the door. A fight in
Roy's tavern was not a part of the plan of
Hawk Rufe.

4<

44

Some Remarks of Saint Paul 99

For a moment the Parson's rage choked him,
and he fought and sputtered. Then he began
to curse with terrible roaring oaths that came
boiling up, oaths that would have awakened
new echoes in the foul hold of any pirate ship
that ever ran.

His bloodshot eyes rolled and glared at the
hunchback over the woolly head of Malan.
There seemed to be something in Ump's face
that lashed the drunkard to a fury. I looked
at Unip to see what it was, and unless I see
the devil, I shall never see the like of that ex-
pression. It was the face of a perfectly cool
imp.

Black Malan carried Peppers through the
door as though he were a bushel of corn in a
bag, and I marked the build of this powerful
man. His neck had muscle creases like the
folds on the neck of a muley bull. His shoul-
ders were bigger than Jud's. His arms were
not so long, but they were thicker, and his
legs stood under him like posts. But he was
slow, and he had but little light in his head.
A tremendous animal was the club-footed
Malan.

loo Dwellers in the Hills

Lem Marks stopped at the door, fingered
his hat and began to apologise. He was sorry
Peppers was drunk, and we must overlook the
vapourings of a drunkard. He wished us a
pleasant journey.

" To the devil," added Ump when the door
had closed on him.

CHAPTER IX

CHRISTIAN THE BLACKSMITH

WE ate our dinner from the quaint old
Dutch blue bowls, and the teacups
with the queer kneeling purple cows on them.
Then we went to feed the horses. Roy brought
us a hickory split basket filled with white com
on the cob, and wiped out a long chestnut
trough which lay by the roadside. We took
the bits out of the horses' mouths, leaving the
headstalls on them, and they fell to with the
hearty impatience of the very hungry.

I have always liked to see a horse or an ox
eat his dinner. Somehow it makes the bread
taste better in one's own mouth. They look
so tremendously content, provokingly so I
used to think when I was little, especially the
ox with the yoke banging his horns. I remem-

I02 Dwellers in the Hills

ber how I used to fill my pockets with " nub-
bins " and, holding one out to old Berry or
some other patriarch of the work cattle, watch
how he reached for it with his rough tongue,
and how surprised he was when I snatched
it away and put it back in my pocket, or gave
it to him, and then thrust my finger against
his jaw, pushing in his cheek so that he could
not eat it. He would look so wofully hurt that
I laughed with glee until old Jourdan came
^ong, gathered me up under his arm, and car-
ried me off kicking to the kingdom of old Liza.

My early experience with the horse was not
so entirely satisfactory to my youthful wor-
ship. Somewhere on my shoulder to this day
are the faint marks of teeth, set there long ago
on a winter morning when I was taking liberties
with the table etiquette of old Charity.

We lolled in the sunshine while the horses
ate, Jud on his back by the nose of the Car-
dinal, his fingers linked under his head. I sat
on the poplar horse-block with my hands
around my knee, while Ump was in the road
examining El Mahdi's feet. For once he had
abandoned the Bay Eagle.

Christian the Blacksmith 103

He rubbed the fetlocks, felt around the top
of the hoofs with his finger, scraped away the
clinging dirt with the point of a knife blade,
and tried the firmness of each shoe-nail. Then
he lifted the horse's foot, rested it on his knee,
and began to examine the shoe as an expert
might examine some intricate device.

Ump held that bad shoeing was the root of
all evil. ** Along comes a flat-nose,*' he would
say, '* with a barefooted colt, an' a gabbin*,
chuckle-headed blacksmith nails shoes on its
feet, an' the flat-nose jumps on an' away he
goes, hipety click, an' the colt interferes, an'
the flat-nose begins a kickin' an' a cursin', an'
then — " Here the hunchback's fingers began
to twitch. ** Somebody ought to come along
an' grab the fool by the scrufif of his neck
an' kick him till he could n't set in a saddle,
an' then go back an' boot the sole-leather off
the blacksmith."

I have seen the hunchback stop a stranger
in the road and point out with indignation that
the shoe on his horse was too short, or binding
the hoof, or too heavy or too light, and then
berate the stranger like a thief becauise he

I04 Dwellers in the Hills

would not turn instantly and ride back to a
smith-shop. And I have seen him sit over a
blacksmith with his narrow face thrust up
under the horse's belly, and put his finger on
the place where every nail was to go in and
the place where it was to come out, and growl
and curse and wrangle, until, if I had been
that smith, I should have killed him with a
hammer.

But the hunchback knew what he was about.
Ward said of Ump that, in his field, the land
of the horse's foot, he was as much an expert
as any professor behind his spectacles. His
knowledge came from the observation of a life-
time, gathered by tireless study of every de-
tail. Even now, when I see a great chemist
who knows all about some drug ; a great sur-
geon who knows all about the body of a man ;
or a great oculist who knows all about the
human eye, I must class the hunchback with
them.

Ump explored El Mahdi's shoes, pulled at
the calks, picked at the nails, and prodded
into the frog of the foot to see if there was
any tendency to gravel. He found a left hind

<<

<<

Christian the Blacksmith 105

shoe that did not suit him, and put down the
foot and wiped his hands on his breeches.

** Who shod this horse, Quiller ? " he said.

** Dunk Hodge," I answered.

The hunchback made a gesture as of one
offered information that is patent. *' I know
Dunk made the shoes," he said, " by the
round corks. But they 've been reset. Who
reset *em ? "

Dunk/' said I.

Not by a jugful ! " responded Ump. ** Old
Dunk never reset 'em."

I sent the horse to him," I said.
I don't care a fiddler's damn where you
sent the horse," replied the hunchback.
** Dunk did n't drive them nails. They 're
beat over at the point instead of being clinched.
It 's a slut job."

** I expect," said Jud, ** it was his ganglin'
son-in-law, Ab."

'• That 's the laddiebuck," said Ump, " an'
he ought to be withed. That hind shoe has
pulled loose an' broke. We 've got to git it
put on."

** Then we shall have to try Christian," said

<<

<<

io6 Dwellers in the Hills

I; '' there 's no other shop this side of the
Stone Coal."

" I know It," mused Ump, " an' when he
goes to the devil, flat-nosed niggers will never
shovel dirt on a meaner dog."

Jud arose and began to bridle the Cardinal.
" He 's mighty triflin'," said he; ** he uses
store nails, an' he 's too lazy to p'int *em."

Now, to use the manufactured nail was
brand enough in the Hills. But to drive it
into a horse's foot without first testing the
point was a piece of turpitude approaching the
criminal.

•' Well." said I, " he '11 drive no nail into El
Mahdi that is n't home-made and smooth."

** Then Ump 'ill have to stand over him,"
replied Jud.

" Damn it," cried the hunchback, striking
his clenched right hand into the palm of his
left, " ain't I stood over every one of the
shirkin* pot-wallopers from the mountains to
the Gauley an' showed him how to shoe a
horse, an' told him over an' over just what to
do an' how to do it, an' put my finger on the
place ? An' by God ! The minute my back 's

Christian the Blacksmith 107

turned, he '11 lame a horse with a splintered
nail, or bruise a frog with a pinchin' cork, or
pare off the toe of the best mare that ever
walked because he 's too damn' lazy to make
the shoe long enough."

Ump turned savagely and went around El
Mahdi to the Bay Eagle, put the bit in her
mouth and mounted the mare. 1 bridled El
Mahdi and climbed into the saddle, and we
rode out toward the Valley River, on the way
but an hour ago taken by the lieutenants of
Woodford. We had watched them from the
tavern door. Peppers ridin g between the other
two, rolling in his saddle and brandishing his
fist. Both he and Malan rode the big brown
cattle-horses of Woodford, while Lem Marks
.rode a bay Hambletonian, slim and nervous,
with speed in his legs. The saddles were all
black, long skirted, with one girth, — the Wood-
ford saddles.

We followed in the autumn midday. It
might have been a scene from some old-time
romance — musketeers of the Kirig and guards
of his mighty Eminence setting out on a mis-
sion which the one master wished and the other

io8 Dwellers in the Hills

wished not ; or the iron lieutenants of Crom-
well riding south in the wake of the cavaliers
of Charles.

For romance, my masters, is no blear-eyed
spinster mooning over the trumpery of a hey-
day that is gone, but a Miss Mischief offering
her dainty fingers to you before the kiss of
your grandfather's lips is yet dry on them.
The damask petticoat, the powdered wig, and
the coquettish little patch by her dimpled little
mouth are off and into the garret, and she
sweeps by in a Worth gown, or takes a fence
on a thoroughbred, or waits ankle deep in the
clover blossoms for some whistling lover, while
your eyes are yet a-blinking.

The blacksmith-shop sat at a crossroads
under a fringe of hickory trees that skirted a
little hilltop. It was scarcely more than a shed,
with a chimney, stone to the roof, and then
built of sticks and clay. Out of this chimney
the sparks ffew when the smith was working,
pitting the black shingle roof and searing the
drooping leaves of the hickories. Around the
shop was the characteristic flotsam, a cart with
a mashed wheel, a plough with a broken

Christian the Blacksmith 109

mould-board, innumerable rusted tires, worn
wagon-irons, and the other wreckage of this
pioneer outpost of the mechanic.

At the foot of the hill as we came up, the
Cardinal caught a stone between the calks of
one of his hind shoes, and Jud got off to pry it
out. Ump and I rode on to the shop and
dismounted at the door. Old Christian was
working at the forge welding a cart-iron, pull-
ing the pole of his bellows, and pausing now
and then to turn the iron in the glowing coals.

He was a man of middle size, perhaps fifty,
bald, and wearing an old leather skull-cap
pitted with spark holes. His nose was crooked
and his eyes were set in toward it, narrow and
close together. He wore an ancient leather
apron, burned here and there and dirty, and
his arms were bare to the elbows.

I led El Mahdi into the shop, and Christian
turned when he heard us enter. " Can you
tack on a shoe ? " said I.

The smith looked us over, took his glowing
iron from the forge, struck it a blow or two on
the anvil, and plunged it sizzling into the tub
of water that stood beside him. Then he

no Dwellers in the Hills

came over to the horse. " Fore or hind ?"
he asked.

" Left hind," I answered; " it 's broken."

He went to the comer of the shop and came
back with his kit,— a little narrow wooden box
on legs, with two places, one for nails and one
for the shoeing
for handle and
side him, took
his apron, and
Then he took i
and catching 01
it a wrench.

I turned on 1
I cried, " you

" It -U pull 1.

Ump was at
He came in wh
he said, " cut t

The blacksmi
shoein' this hor

The eyes of 1
" You 're a-doii
in' you how."
" If I 'm a ^„... ... „,„,..._..- —

Christian the Blacksmith m

smith, " suppose you go to hell." And he
gave the shoe another wrench.

I was on him in a moment, and he threw me
off so that I fell across the shop against a pile
of horseshoes. The hunchback caught up a
sledge that lay by the door and threw it. Old
Christian was on one knee. He dodged under
the horse and held up the kit to ward off the
blow. The iron nose of the sledge struck the
box and crushed it like a shell, and, passing
on, bounded off the steel anvil with a bang.

The blacksmith sprang out as the horse
jumped, seized the hammer and darted at
Ump. I saw the hunchback look around for
a weapon. There was none, but he never
moved. The next moment his head would
have burst like a cracked nut, but in that mo-
ment a shadow loomed in the shop door.
There was a mad rush like the sudden swoop
of some tremendous hawk. The blacksmith
was swept off his feet, carried across the shop,
and flattened against the chimney of his forge.
I looked on, half dazed by the swiftness of the
thing. I did not see that it was Jud until old
Christian was gasping under the falling mortar

112 Dwellers in the Hills

of his chimney, his feet dangling and his sooty
throat caught in the giant's fingers, that looked
like squeezing iron bolts. The staring eyes of
the old man were glassy, his face was beginning
to get black, his mouth opened, and his ex-
tended bare arm holding the hammer began to
come slowly down.

It rested a moment on the giant's shoulder,
then it bent at the elbow, the fingers loosed,
and the hammer fell. Old Christian will never
be nearer to the pit of his imperial master until
he stumbles over its rim.

The hunchback glided by me and clapped
his hand on Jud's shoulder. ** Drop him," he
cried.

The blood of the giant was booming. The
desperate savage, passed sleeping from his
father and his father's father, had awaked, and
awaked to kill. I could read the sinister in-
tent in the crouch of his shoulders.

The hunchback shook him. ** Jud," he
shouted, ** Jud, drop him."

The giant turned his head, blinked his eyes
for a moment like a man coming out of a
sleep, and loosed his hand. The blacksmith

Christian the Blacksmith 113

slipped to the floor, but he could not stand
when he reached it. His knees gave way.
He caught the side of the leather bellows, and
stumbling around it, sat down on the anvil
wheezing like a stallion with the heaves.

Ump stooped and picked up the hammer.
Then he turned to the puffing giant. ** Jud,*'
he said, '' you ain't got sense enough to pour
rain-water out of a boot. ' '

''Why?" said Jud.

** Why?" echoed the hunchback, ** why?
Suppose you had wrung the old blatherskite's
neck. How do you reckon we 'd a got a shoe
on this horse ? "

8

CHAPTER X

ON THE CHOOSING OP ENEMIES

IT has been suggested by the wise that per-
haps every passing event leaves its picture
on the nearest background, and may hereafter
be reproduced by the ingenuity of man. If
so, and if genius led us into this mighty gallery
of the past, there is no one thing I would
rather look at than the face of a youth who
stood rubbing his elbows in the shop of old
Christian, the blacksmith.

The slides of violent emotion, thrust in
when unexpected, work such havoc in a child's
face, — that window to the world which half
our lives are spent in curtaining I

I wish to see the face of the lad only if the
gods please. The canvas about it is all toler-
ably clear, — the smoke-painted shop, and the

Choosing of Enemies 1 1 5

afternoon sun shining in to it through the win-
dow by the forge ; and through the great cracks,
vertical sheets of sunlight thrust, wherein the
golden dust was dancing ; the blacksmith pant-
ing on his anvil, his bare arms bowed, and his
hands pressed against his body as though to
help somehow to get the good air into his
lungs, beads of perspiration creeping frofti
under the leather cap and tracing white fur-
rows down his sooty face; Jud leaning against
the wall, and Ump squatting near El Mahdi.
The horse was not frightened. He jumped to
avoid the flying sledge. That was all. I can-
not speak of the magnitude of his courage. I
can only say that he had the sublime indiffer-
ence of a Brahmin from the Ganges.

Presently the blacksmith had gotten the air
in him, and he arose scowling, picked up his
tongs, fished the cart-iron out of the water,
thrust it into the coals and began to pump his
bellows.

It was an invitation to depart and leave him
to his own business. But it was not our in-
tention to depart with a barefooted horse,
even if the devil were the blacksmith. ,

ii6 Dwellers in the Hills

'* Christian," said Ump, ** you *re not
through with this horse."

The blacksmith paid no attention. He
pumped his bellows with his back toward us.

" Christian! " repeated the hunchback, and
his voice was the ugliest thing I have ever
heard. It was low and soft and went whistling
through the shop. ** Do you hear me, Chris-
tian ? "

The smith turned like an animal that hears
a hissing by his heels, threw the tongs on the
floor, and glared at Ump. '* I won't do it,"
he snarled.

** Easy, Christian," said the hunchback,
with the same wheedling voice that came
so strangely through his crooked mouth.
** Think about it, man. The horse is bare-
foot. We should be much obliged to you."

I do not believe that this man was a coward.
It was his boast that he could shoe anything
that could walk into his shop, and he lived up
to the boast. I give him that due, on my
honour. Many a devil walked into that shop
wearing the hoof and hide of a horse and came
out with iron nailed on his feet ; for example,

Choosing of Enemies 1 1 7

horses like the Black Abbot that fought and
screamed when we put a saddle on him first
and rolled on the earth until he crushed the
saddle-tree and the stirrups into splinters ;
and horses like El Mahdi that tried to kill the
blacksmith as though he were an annoying fly.
It was dangerous business, and I do not believe
that old Christian was a coward.

But what show had he ? An arm's length
away was the powerful Jud whose hand had
just now held the smith out over the earner
of the world ; and the hunchback squatted
on the floor with the striking hammer in his
long fingers, the red glint under his half-closed
eyelids, and that dangerous purring speech in
his mouth. What show had he ?

The man looked up at the roof, blackened
with the smoke of half a century, and then
down at the floor, and the resolution died in
his face. He gathered up his scattered tools
and went over to the horse, lifted his foot, cut
the nails, and removed the pieces of broken
shoe.

Then he climbed on the anvil, and began to
move the manufactured shoes that were set in

ii8 Dwellers in the Hills

rows along the rafters, looking for a size that
would fit.

'* Them won't do," said Ump. *' You '11
have to make a shoe, Christian."

The man got down without a word, seized
a bar of iron and thrust it into the coals. Jud
caught the pole of his bellows, and pumped it
for him. The smith turned the iron in the
coals. When it glowed he took it out, cut off
the glowing piece on the chisel in his anvil,
caught it up in a pair of tongs and thrust it
back into the fire. Then he waited with his
hands hanging idly while Jud pulled the pole
of the old bellows until it creaked and groaned
and the fire spouted sparks.

When the iron was growing fluffy white, the
smith caught it up in his tongs, lifted it from
the fire, flung off a shower of hissing sparks
and began to hammer, drawing it out and
beating it around the horn of the anvil until
presently it became a rough flat shoe.

The iron was cooling, and he put it back
into the coals. When it was hot again, he
turned the calks, punched the nail holes and
carried it glowing to where the horse stood.

Choosing of Enemies 1 19

held it an instant to the hoof, noted the
changes to be made, and thrust it back into
the fire.

A moment later the hissing shoe was
plunged into a tub of water by the anvil, and
then thrown steaming to the floor. Ump
picked it up, passed his finger over it and then
set it against El Mahdi's foot. It was a trifle
narrow at the heel, and Ump pitched it back
to the smith, spreading his fingers to indicate
the defect. Old Christian sprung the calks on
the horn of the anvil, and returned the shoe.
The hunchback thrust his hand between the
calks, raised the shoe and squinted along its
surface to see if it were entirely level. Then
he nodded his head.

The blacksmith went over to the wall, and
began to take down a paper box. The hunch-
back saw him and turned under the horse.
* ' We can't risk a store nail, " he said. * * You '11
have to make *em."

For the first time the man spoke. ** No
iron," he answered.

Ump arose and began to look over the shop.
Presently he found an old scythe blade and

I20 Dwellers in the Hills

threw It to the smith. *' That '11 do," he said ;
•' take the back."

Old Christian broke the strip of iron from
the scythe blade and heating it in his forge,
made the nails, hammering them into shape,
and cutting them from the rod until he had a
dozen lying by the anvil. When they were
cool, he gathered them in his hand, smoothed
the points, and went over to El Mahdi.

The old man lifted the horse's foot, and set
it on his knee, and Ump arose and stood over
him. Then he shod the horse as the hunch-
back directed, paring the hoof and setting the
nails evenly through the outer rim, clipping
the nail ends, and clinching them by doubling
the cut points. Then he smoothed the hoof
with his great file and the work was over.

We rode south along the ridge, leaving old
Christian standing in his shop door, his face
sullen and his grimy arms folded. I flung him
a silver dollar, four times the price of the shoe-
ing. It fell by the shop sill, and he lifted his
foot and sent it spinning across the road into
the bushes.

The road ran along the ridge. A crumbling

Choosing of Enemies 1 2 1

rail fence laced with the vines of the poison ivy
trailed beside it. In its corners stood the great
mullein, and the dock, and the dead iron-
weed. The hickories, trembling in their yel-
low leaves, loomed above the fringe of sugar
saplings like some ancient crones in petticoats
of scarlet. Sometimes a partridge ran for a
moment through the dead leaves, and then
whizzed away to some deeper tangle in the
woods ; now a grey squirrel climbed a shellbark
with the clatter of a carpenter shingling a roof,
and sat by his door to see who rode by, or
shouted his jeer, and, diving into his house,
thrust his face out at the window. Some-
times, far beyond us, a pheasant walked across
the road, strutting as straight as a harnessed
brigadier, — an outlaw of the Hills who had
sworn by the feathers on his legs that he would
eat no bread of man, and kept the oath. Splen-
did freeman, swaggering like a brigand across
the war-paths of the conqueror !

We were almost at the crown of the ridge
when a brown flying-squirrel, routed from his
cave in a dead limb by the hammering of a
hungry woodpecker, stood for a moment

122 Dwellers in the Hills

blinking in the sunlight and then made a fly-
ing leap for an oak on the opposite side of the
road ; but his estimate was calculated on the
moonlight basis, and he missed by a fraction
of an inch and went tumbling head over heels
into the weeds.

I turned to laugh at the disconcerted acrobat,
when I caught through the leaves the glimpse
of a horse approaching the blacksmith-shop
from one of the crossroads. I called to my
companions and we found a break in the woods
where the view was clear. At half a mile in
the transparent afternoon we easily recognised
Lem Marks. He rode down to the shop and
stopped by the door.

In a moment old Christian came out, stood
by the shoulder of the horse and rested his
hand on Marks' knee. It was strange familiar-
ity for such an acrimonious old recluse, and
even at the distance the attitude of Wood-
ford's henchman seemed to indicate surprise.

They talked together for some little while,
then old Christian waved his arm toward the
direction we had taken and went into his shop,
presently returning with some implements in

Choosing of Enemies 123

his hand. We could not make out what they
were. He handed them up to Marks, and the
two seemed to discuss the matter, for after a
time Marks selected one and held it out to old
Christian. The smith took it, turned it over
in his hand, nodded his head and went back
into his shop, while Marks gathered up his
reins and came after us in a slow fox trot.

We slipped over the ridge and then straight-
ened in our saddles.

" Boys," said the hunchback, fingering the
mane of the Bay Eagle, '' that was a bad job.
We ought to be a little more careful in the
pickin' of enemies."

** Damn 'em," muttered Jud, ** I wonder
what mare's nest they 're fixin'. I ought to
'a twisted the old buck's neck."

The hunchback leaned over his saddle and
ran his fingers along the neck of the splendid
mare. ** Peace," he soliloquised, ** is a purty
thing." Then he turned to me with a banter-
ing, quizzical light in his eyes.

" Quiller," he said, ** don't you wish you
had your dollar back in your pocket ? "

"Why? "said I.

124 Dwellers in the Hills

" It 's like this," said he. ** One time there
was an' old miser, an' when he was a-dyin' the
devil come, an* set down by the bed, an' the
devil said, * You 've done a good deal of work
for me, an' I reckon I ought to give you a
lift if you need it. Now, then, if there 's any
little thing you want done, I '11 look after it
for you.* The miser said he 'd like to have an
iron fence round his grave, if the devil thought
he could see to it without puttin' himself out
any. The devil said it would n't be any
trouble, an' t]ien he counted off on his fingers
the minutes the miser had to live, an' lit out.

** They buried the miser in a poor corner of
the graveyard where there was nothin* but
sinkiield an' sand briars, an' that night the
devil went down to the blacksmith an' told
him he wanted an iron fence put around the
old feller's grave, an' to git it done before
midnight. The blacksmith throwed his coat
an' went to work like a whitehead, an' when
twelve o'clock come he had the iron fence
done an' a settin' around the miser's grave.

''Just as the clock struck, the devil come
along, an' he said to the blacksmith, standin'

Choosing of Enemies 125

there a-sweatin' like a colt, * Well, I see you
got her all up hunkey dorey.' * Yes,' said the *
blacksmith, * an' now I want my pay.' * Let 's
see about that,' said the devil; ' did you do
that job because you wanted to, or because
you did n't want to ? ' The blacksmith did n't
know what to say, so he hemmed and hawed,
an' finally he says, ' Maybe I done it because
I wanted to, an' maybe I done it because I
did n't want to.' * All right,' said the devil;
' if you done it because you wanted to, I don't
owe you nothin', an' if you done it because
you did n't want to, there ain't nothin' I can
pay you.' An' he sunk in the ground, with
his thumb to his nose an' his fingers a-wigglin'
at the blacksmith."

I saw the application of the story. One
could settle with money for labour when the
labourer was free, but when the labourer was
not free, when he had used his breath and his
muscle under a master, money could make no
final settlement.

Ugly accounts to run in a world where the
scheme of things is eternally fair, and worse,
maybe, if carried over for adjustment into the

126 Dwellers in the Hills

Court of Final Equity ! The remark of Ump
came back like a line of ancient wisdom,
" Peace is a purty thing."

CHAPTER XI

THE WARDENS OF THE RIVER

WHILE men are going about with a bit
of lens and a measure of acid, explain-
ing the hidden things of this world, I should
be very glad if they would explain why it is
that the evening of an autumn day always re-
calls the lost Kingdom of the Little. The sun
squinting behind the mountains, the blue haze
deepening in the hollows of the hills, the cool
air laden with faint odours from the nooks and
corners of the world, — what have these to do
with the land of the work-a-day ?

Long and long ago in that other country it
meant that the fairies were gathering under
the hill for another raid on the province of the
goblins across the sedge-fields ; that the owls
were going up on the ridges to whisper with

127

128 Dwellers in the Hills

the moon ; that the elves one by one, in their
quaint yellow coats, were stealing along under
the oak trees on the trail of the wolf spider.
But what can it mean in the grown-up country ?

When the Golden Land is lost to us, when
turning suddenly we iind the enchanted king-
dom vanished, do we give up the hope of
finding it again ? We know that it is some-
where across the world, and we ought to find
it, and we know, too, that its out-country is
tike these October afternoons, and our hearts
beat wildly for a moment, then the truth
strikes and we see that this is not The
Land.

But it brings the memory of the heyday of
that other land, where, in my babyhood, like
the kings of Bagdad, I had a hundred bay
horses in their stables, each bridled with a col-
oured woollen string, and stalled in the palings
of the garden, and each with his high-sounding
name, and princely lineage, and his thrilling
history, and where I had a thousand black cat-
tle at pasture in the old orchard.

It might be that an ancient, passing, would
not see the drove, because his eyes were

The Wardens of the River 1 29

hide-bound, but he would see me as I galloped
along by the hot steers, and hear the shouting,
and he could not doubt that they were there.
I was tremendously busy in those earlier days.
No cattle king of the Hills had one-half the
wonderful business. I dropped to sleep in old
Liza's arms with my mighty plans swimming
in my head. I had long rides and many
bunches of cattle to gather on to-morrow, and
I must have a good night's rest.

Or I rode in Ward's arms, when he went to
salt the cattle, and sat in the saddle while he
threw the handfuls of salt on the weeds, and I
noticed all the wonders of the land into which
we came. I saw the golden-belted bee boom-
ing past on his mysterious voyage, and he was
a pirate sailing the summer seas. I heard the
buzzing curse of the bald hornet, and I wished
him hard luck on his robbing raid. And the
swarms of yellow butterflies were bands of
stranger fairies travelling incognito. I knew
what these fellows were about, but I said
nothing. The ancients were good enough folk,
but their idea of perspective was abominably

warped. I gave them up pretty early.
9

I30 Dwellers in the Hills

The hills by the great Valley River are a
quiet country, sodded deep, with here and
there an open grove like those in which the
dreamers wandered with a garland of meadow-
sweet, or the fauns piped when the world was
young. Through them, now and then, a little
stream goes laughing, fringed with bulrushes
and beds of calamus and fragrant mint, a nar-
row stream that runs chuckling through the
stiff sod and spreads dimpling over the road
on a bed of white sand, for all the world like a
dodging sprite of the wood who laughs sud-
denly in some sunlit corner.

We splashed through one of these little
brooks as the sun was setting, and El Mahdi's
feet sank in the white sand. I watched the
crystal water go bubbling over his hoofs and
then pour with a gush into the shoe tracks
which held the print like a mould. We left a
silver trail or, now when the sun was slanting,
a golden trail, big with the air of enchanted
ventures.

When we came on the brow of the hills flank-
ing the approaches to the Valley River it was
already night. The outlines of the far-off

The Wardens of the River 1-3 1

mountains were blending into one huge shadow.
It was now the wall of the world, with no path
for a human foot. The hills were a purple
haze, the trees along their crests making fan-
tastic pictures against the sky. Beyond the
land of living men, it seemed, an owl hooted,
and a belated dove called and called like a
moaning spirit wandering in some lost tarn of
the Styx.

We rode down to the bend of the Valley River
over a stretch of sandy land pre-empted by the
cinque-foil and the running brier, the country
of the woodcock and the eccentric kildee. We
could hear the low, sullen roar of the river
sweeping north around this big bend, long be-
fore we came to it. Under the stars there is no
greater voice of power. We rode side by
side in the deepening twilight, making huge
shadows on the crunching sand. Up to this
hour it seemed to me that we had been idling
through some long and pleasant ride, with the
loom of evil afar off in the front. We had
talked of peril merrily together, as men loiter-
ing in a tavern talk easily of the wars. But
now in the night, under the spell of the

132 Dwellers in the Hills

booming water, the atmosphere of responsi-
bility returned.

Ward was depending upon me and the two
beside me. Woodford's men moved back
yonder in the Hills, and maybe they moved
out there beyond the water, and we could see
nothing and hear nothing but the sand grind-
ing under the iron of a horse's shoe. In the
night the face of the Valley River was not a
pleasant thing to see. It ran muddy and
swift, even with its banks, a bed of water a
quarter of a mile in width, its yellow surface
gleaming now and then in the dim light of the
evening like the belly of some great snake.

Standing on its bank we could see the other
shore, a line of grey fog. The yellow tongues
of the water lapped the bank, and crept mut-
tering in among the willows, an ominous,
hungry brood.

The roar of the river, now that one stood
beside it, seemed not so great. It was dull,
heavy, low pitched, as though the vast water
growled comfortably. The rains in the mount-
ains had filled the bed brimming like a cup,
even in the drought of summer. The valley

The Wardens of the River 133

was wide and deep in this bend, — too wide and
too deep to be crossed by the ordinary bridge,
— so the early men had set up a sort of ferry
when they first came to this water.

It was a rude makeshift, the old men said,
two dugouts of poplar lashed together and
paddled, a thing that would carry a man and
his horse, or perhaps a yoke of oxen. Now,
the ferry was more pretentious. A wire cable
stretched across the river, fastened on the
south bank to a post set deep in the earth, and
flanked by an abutment of sandstone, and on
the north bank wound round a huge elm that
stood by the road within a dozen yards of the
river.

On this cable the boat ran, fastened with
wire ropes and two pulleys, a sort of long, flat
barge that would carry thirty cattle. The
spanning cable made a great curve down the
river, so that the strength of the current was
almost sufficient to force the barge across,
striking it obliquely against the dip of the wire.
How the current could be made to do this
work was to me one of the mysteries, but it
did do it, guided and helped by the ferrymen.

134 Dwellers in the Hills

I have wondered at it a hundred times as I sat
under El Mahdi's nose with my feet dangling
over the side of the boat.

We stopped on the slope where the boat
landed.

Jud threw back his shoulders and shouted ;
and someone answered from the other side,
" Who-ee! " a call that is said to reach farther
than any other human sound. It came high
up over the water, clear enough, but as from a
great distance. There were no bells at the
crossings in this land. Every man carried a
voice in his throat that could reach half a mile
to the grazing steers on the sodded knobs.

The two sons of old Jonas Horton main-
tained the ferry as their father had done before
them. It was an inheritance, and it was some-
thing more than this. It was a trust, a family
distinction, like a title, — something which they
were born into, as a Hindoo is born into his
father's trade. If they had been ousted from
this ferry, they would have felt themselves as
hopelessly wronged as the descendants of an
old house driven from their baronial estate.

The two. Mart and Danel, lived with the

The Wardens of the River 135

mother, a flat, withered old woman, in a log
house by the river. They were tall, raw-
boned, serious men, rarely leaving the river,
and at such times hurrying back uneasy. Their
faces at the church or in the village were
anxious, as of one who leaves his house closed
with a fire roaring in the chimney ; or better,
perhaps, of some fearful child who has stolen
away from his daily everlasting task. Some-
times the mother would say, ** There is no
meal in the barrel," or, ** You 're drinking the
last of the coflee **; and they would look at
each other across the table, troubled, as men
dire beset called upon to decrease the forces of
a garrison. Then one would set out with a
bag on his shoulder, throwing his long body
forward at each step and dangling his arms,
hurrying as though he ought not to take the
time.

Presently the boat crept towards us out of
the water, swung down swiftly and ground its
nose in the bank. The two ferrymen were
bareheaded, in their brown homespun coats.
They had possibly been at supper, and turned
around on their bench to answer through the

136 Dwellers in the Hills

open door. They inquired if we all wished to
be set over, and we rode on to the boat for
answer. The man in the bow reached up and
caught the cable with a sort of iron wrench,
and began to pull. The other took a pole
lying by the horses* feet, thrust it against the
bank and forced the boat out into the water.
Then he also took a wrench from his pocket,
and when his brother, walking down the length
of the barge from bow to stern, reached the
end, he caught the cable and followed, so that
the pull on the wire was practically continuous.
The warm south wind blew stiffly in our
faces and the horses shifted their feet uneasily.
If the Valley River was ugly from its bank it was
uglier from its middle. It tugged at the boat
as though with a thousand clinging fingers,
and growled and sputtered, and then seemed
to quit it for a moment and whisper around
the oak boards like invisible conspirators taking
counsel in a closet. A scholar on that water
nursing his sallow face in the trough of his
hand would have fallen a-brooding on the grim
boatman crossing to the shore that none may
leave, or the old woman of the Sanza, poling

The Wardens of the River 137

her ghostly, everlasting raft; and had he
listened, he could have heard the baying of
the three-mouthed hound arousing the wardens
of the Vedic Underworld to their infernal
watching by that water we all must cross.

I think the hunchback had no idea of the
moods of nature; at any rate they never
seemed to affect him. To him all water was
something to drink or something to swim in,
and the earth was good pasture or hard road
to ride a horse over. The grasp of no agnostic
was more cynical. He inquired if any of
Woodford's men had crossed that day, and
was answered that they had not.

Then he began to hum a hoary roundelay
about the splendid audacity of old Mister
Haystack and his questionable adventures,
set to an unprintable refrain of ** Winktum
bolly mitch-a-kimo," or some such jumble of
words. I have never heard this song in the
mouth of any other man. He must have
found it somewhere among the dusty trumpery
of forgotten old folk-lyrics, and when he sang
it one caught the force of the Hebraic simile
about the crackling of thorns under a pot.

<<

<4

138 Dwellers in the Hills

Jud laughed, and the hunchback piped a
higher cackle and dangled his bridle rein.
** Humph," he said, ** maybe you don't like
that song. ' '

** It ain't the song," replied Jud.

** Maybe you don't like the way I sing it,"
said he.

It might be different," said Jud.
Well," said he, ** it would n't mean dif-
ferent."

Here I took a hand in the dialogue. '' What
does it mean anyhow ? " I said. '* It 's about
the foolest song I ever heard."

** Quiller," replied the hunchback, propping
his fist under his bony jaw, ** you 've heard
tell of whistlin' to keep up your courage.
Well, that song was made for them as can't
whistle."

Jud turned in astonishment. "Afraid?"
he said ; *' what are you afraid of ? "

The hunchback leaned over as if about to
impart a secret. "Ghosts!" he whispered.
I laughed at the discomfiture of the giant, but
Ump went on counterfeiting a deep and weird
seriousness which, next to his singing, was

The Wardens of the River 1 39

about the most ludicrous thing in the world.
** Ghosts, my laddiebuck. But not the white-
sheeted lady that comes an' says, ' Poller me,'
nor the spook that carries his head under his
arm tied up in a tablecloth, but ghosts, my
laddiebuck, that make tracks while they
walk."

'* I thought ghosts rode broomsticks," said
Jud.

** Nary a broomstick," replied the hunch-
back. '* When they are a-foUerin' Mister
Ward's drovers, it 's a little too peaked for
long ridin'."

Then he broke off suddenly and called to
the ferryman. ** Danel," he said, ** how
many cattle will this boat hold ? ' '

"Big cattle or stockers?" inquired the

man.

44

Exporters," said Ump.
** Mart," called the brother, " can we carry
thirty exporters ? "

Are they dehorned ? " inquired Mart.

Muley," said Ump.

We can carry thirty muleys if they ain't
nervous," replied the brother called Mart.

<<

<<

<«

I40 Dwellers in the Hills

** Are you gatherin* up some cattle for Mister
Ward?"

*' Yes," said Ump. '* We 'U be here early
in the morning with six hundred, an' we want
to git 'em set over as quick as you can. How
long will it take ? "

" Well," said Danel, '* mighty nigh up till
noon, I reckon. Do you mind. Mart, how
long we were settin* over them Alkire cattle ? "

** We begun in the morning, and we stopp'd
for an afternoon bite. It took the butt end of
the day," replied the brother.

We had now reached the south bank of the
Valley River, and when the boat slipped up
on the wet sod, we rode ashore, and turned
into the pike that runs by the river bank.
The ferrymen, with the characteristic hospital-
ity of the Hills, requested us to dismount and
share the evening meal, but we declined, urging
the lateness of the hour.

Through the open door I could see the un-
finished supper, the sweet corn-pone cut like a
great cheese, the striped bacon, and the blue
stone milk pitcher with its broken ears.

CHAPTER XII

THE USES OF THE MOON

WHEN I turned about in the saddle I
found that El Mahdi had passed both
of my companions who were stock still in the
road a half-dozen paces behind me. I pulled
him up and called to them, " What mare's
nest have you found now ? "

They replied that some horse had lately
passed in a gallop. One could tell by the
long jumping and the deep, ploughing hoof-
prints. " Come on," said I, " Woodford's
devils have n't crossed. What do we care ? "

" But it *s mighty big jumpin'," answered
the hunchback.

" Maybe," I responded laughing, " the cow
that jumped over the moon took a running
start there."

14^ Dwellers in the Hills

'' If she did/' said Ump, " I 'U just find out
if any of the Hortons saw her goin'.** Then
he shouted, " Hey, Danel, who crossed ahead
of us ? "

The long bulk of the fenyman loomed in
the door. " It was Twiggs," he answered.

I heard Jud cursing under his breath.
Twiggs was the head groom of Csmthia Car-
per, and when he ran a horse like that the
devil was to pay. I gripped the reins of El
Mahdi's bridle until he began to rear.

" He must have been in a hurry," said
Ump.

** Tears like it," responded the boatman,
turning back into^ his house. " He lit out
pretty brisk. ' '

Ump shook the reins of his bridle and went
by me in a gallop. The Cardinal passed at
my knee, and I followed, bending over to
keep the flying sand out of my eyes.

The moon was rising, a red wheel behind
the shifting fog. And under its soft light the
world was a ghost land. We rode like phan-
toms, the horses' feet striking noiselessly in
the deep sand, except where we threw the

The Uses of the Moon 143

dead sycamore leaves. My body swung with
the motions of the horse, and Ump and Jud
might have been a part of the thing that gal-
loped under their saddles.

The art of riding a horse cannot be learned
in half a dozen lessons in the academy on the
avenue. It does not lie in the crook of the
knee, or the angle of the spine. It does not
lie in the make of the saddle or the multiplicity
of snaffle reins, nor does it lie in the thirty-
nine articles of my lady's riding-master. But
it is embraced in the grasp of one law that may
be stated in a line, and perhaps learned in a
dozen years, — be a part of the horse.

The mastery of an art — be it what you like
— does but consist in the comprehension of its
basic law. The appreciation of this truth is
indispensable. It cannot avail to ape the man-
ner of the initiate. I have seen dapper youths
booted and spurred, riding horses in the park,
rising to the trot and holding the ball of the
foot just so on the iron of the stirrup, and if
the horse had bent his body they would have
gone sprawling into the bramble bushes. Yet
these youngsters believed that they were riding

144 Dwellers in the Hills

like her Majesty's cavalry, the ogled gallants
of every strolling lass.

I have seen begloved clubmen with an Eng-
lish accent worrying a good horse that they
understood about as well as a problem in
mechanics or any line of Horace. And I have
seen my lady sitting a splendid mount, with
the reins caught properly in her fingers and
her back as straight as a whip-staff, and I would
have wagered my life that every muscle in her
little body was as rigid as a rock, and her knee
as numb as the conscience of a therapeutist.

Look, if you please, at the mud-stained
cavalryman who has lived his days and his
nights in the saddle ; or the cattle drover who
has never had any home but this pigskin seat,
and mark you what a part of the horse he is.
Hark back to these models when you are
listening to the vapourings of a riding-master
lately expatriated from the stables of Sir
Henry. To ride well is to recreate the fabu-
lous centaur of Thessaly.

We raced over the mile of sand road in fewer
minutes than it takes to write it down here.
There was another factor, new come into the

The Uses of the Moon 145

problem, and we meant to follow it close.
Expedition has not been too highly sung. An
esoteric novelist hath it that a pigmy is as
good as a giant if he arrive in time.

At the end of this mile, below Horton's
Ferry, the road forks, and there stands a white
signboard with its arms crossed, proclaiming
the ways to the travelling stranger. The
cattle Ward had bought were in two droves.
Four hundred were on the lands of Nicholas
Marsh, perhaps three miles farther down the
Valley River, and the remaining two hundred
a mile or two south of the crossroads at David
Westfall's.

Ump swung his horse around in the road at
the forks. ** Boys," he said, " we *11 have to
divide up. I'll go over to old Westfall's, an'
you bring up the other cattle. I '11 make
King David help to the forks."

" What about Twiggs ? '* said I.

" To hell with Twiggs," said he. *' If he
gits in your way, throat him." Then he
clucked to the Bay Eagle and rode over the
hill, his humped back rising and falling with
the gallop of the mare.

xo

146 Dwellers in the Hills

We slapped the reins on our horses' necks
and passed on to the north, the horses nose to
nose, and my stirrup leather brushing the
giant's knee at every jump of El Mahdi. The
huge Cardinal galloped in the moonlight like
some splendid machine of bronze, never a
misstep, never a false estimate, never the dif-
ference of a finger's length in the long, even
jumps. It might have been the one-eyed
Agib riding his mighty horse of brass, except
that no son of a decadent Sultan ever carried
the bulk of Orange Jud. And the eccentric El
Mahdi ! There was no cause for fault-finding
on this night. He galloped low and easily,
gathering his grey legs as gracefully as his splen-
did, nervous mother. I watched his mane flut-
tering in the stiff breeze, his slim ears thrust
forward, the moon shining on his steel-blue hide.
For once he seemed in sympathy with what I
was about. Seemed, I write it, for it must have
been a mistaken fancy. This splendid, indif-
ferent rascal shared the sensations of no living
man. Long and long ago he had sounded life
and found it hollow. Still, as if he were a
woman, I loved him for this accursed indiffer-

The Uses of the Moon 147

ence. Was it because his emotions were so
hopelessly inaccessible, or because he saw
through the illusion we were chasing; or be-
cause — because — who knows what it was ?
We have no litmus-paper test for the charm of
genius.

Under us the dry leaves crackled like twigs
snapping in a fire, and the flying sand cut the
bushes along the roadway like a storm of whiz-
zing hailstones. In the wide water of the Val-
ley River the moon flitted, and we led her a
lively race. When I was little I had a theory
about this moon. The old folks were all
wrong about its uses. Lighting the night was
a piece of incidental business. It was there
primarily as a door into and out of the world.
Through it we came, carried down from the
hilltops on the backs of the crooked men and
handed over to the old black mammy who
unwrapped us trembling by the firelight.
Then we squalled lustily, and they said ** A
child is born."

When a man died, as we have a way of say-
ing, he did but go back with these same
crooked men through the golden door of the

148 Dwellers in the Hills

world. Had I not seen the moon standing
with its rim on the eastern ridge of the Seely
Hill when they found old Jerry Lance lying
stone-dead in his house ? And had I not pre-
dicted with an air of mysterious knowledge
that Jourdan would recover when Red Mike
threw him ? The sky was moonless and he
could not get out if he wished.

Besides there was a lot of mystery about
this getting into the world. Often when I
was little, I had questioned the elders closely
about it, and their replies were vague, clothed
in subtle and bedizzened generalities. They
did not know, that was clear, and since they
were so abominably evasive I was resolved to
keep the truth locked in my own bosom and let
them find out about it the best way they could.
Once, in a burst of confidence I broached the
subject to old Liza and explained my theory.
She listened with a grave face and said that I
had doubtless discovered the real truth of the
matter, and I ought to explain it to a waiting
world. But I took a different view, swore her
to secrecy, and rode away on a peeled gum-stick
horse named Alhambra, the Son of the Wind.

The Uses of the Moon 149

While the horses ran, I speculated on the
possible mission of Twiggs, but I could find no
light, except that, of course, it augured no
good to us. I think Jud wasr turning the same
problem, for once in a while I could hear him
curse, and the name of Twiggs flitted among
the anathemas. We had hoped for a truce of
trouble until we came up to Woodford beyond
the Valley River. But here was a minion of
Cynthia riding the country like Paul Revere.
My mind ran back to the saucy miss on the
ridge of Thornberg's Hill, and her enigmatic
advice, blurted out in a moment of pique.
This Twiggs was colder baggage. But, Lord
love me ! how they both ran their horses !

Three miles soon slip under a horse's foot,
and almost before we knew it we were travel-
ling up to Nicholas Marsh's gate. Jud lifted
the wooden latch and we rode down to the
house. Ward said that Nicholas Marsh was
the straightest man in all the cattle business,
scrupulously clean in every detail of his trades.
Many a year Ward bought his cattle without
looking at a bullock of them. If Marsh said
*' Good tops and middlin' tails," the good

ISO Dwellers in the Hills

ones of his drove were always first class and
the bad ones rather above the ordinary. The
name of Marsh was good in the Hills, and his
word was good. I doubt me if a man can
leave behind him a better fame than that.

The big house sat on a little knoll among
the maples, overlooking the Valley River.
The house was of grey stone, built by his
father, and stood surrounded by a porch,
swept by the maple branches and littered
with saddles, saddle blankets, long rope halt-
ers, bridles, salt sacks, heavy leather hobbles,
and all the workaday gear of a cattle grazier.

There was a certain air of strangeness in the
way we were met at Nicholas Marsh's house.
I do not mean inhospitality, rather the reverse,
with a tinge of embarrassment, as of one enter-
taining the awkward guest. We were evidently
expected, and a steaming supper was laid for us.
Yet, when I sat at the table and* Jud with his
plate by the smouldering fire, we were not
entirely easy. Marsh walked through the
room, backward and forward, with his hands
behind him, and a great lock of his iron-grey
hair throwing shadows across his face. Now

The Uses of the Moon 1 5 1

and then he put some query about the grass,
or my brother's injury, or the condition of the
road, and then turned about on his heel. His
fine open face wore traces of annoyance. It
was plain that there had been here some busi-
ness not very pleasing to this honourable
man. When I told him we had come for
the cattle, the muscles of his jaw seemed to
tighten. He stopped and looked me squarely
in the face.

** Well, QuiUer," he said, with what seemed
to me to be unnecessary firmness, '' I shall let
you have them."

I heard Jud turn sharply in his chair.

** Let me have them ? Is there any trouble
about it ? "

The man was clearly embarrassed. He bit
his lip and twisted his neck around in his
collar. '' No,'' he said, hesitating in his
speech, ** there is n't any trouble. Still a
man might demand the money at the scales.
He would have a right to do that."

My pulse jumped. So this was one of their
plans, those devils. And we had never a one
of us dreamed of it. If the money were

152 • Dwellers in the Hills

demanded at the scales it would mean delay,
and delay meant that Woodford would win.

So this was Twiggs's part in the ugly work.
No wonder he ran his horse. Trust a woman
for jamming through the devil's business.
Nothing but the good fibre of this honourable
man had saved us. But Westfall! He was
lighter stuff. How about Westfall ?

I looked up sharply into the troubled face of
the honest man.

** How about the other cattle," I faltered;
shall we get them ? "

" Who went for them ? " he asked.

** Ump," I replied; ** he left us at the cross-
roads."

The man took his watch out of his pocket
and studied for a moment. ** Yes," he said,
" you will get them."

It was put like some confident opinion based
upon the arrival of an event.

'* Mister Marsh," I said, '* are you afraid of
Ward ? Is n't he good for the money ? "

" Don't worry about that, my boy," he
answered, taking up the candlestick, ** I have
said that you shall have the cattle, and you

The Uses of the Moon 153

shall have them. Let me see about a bed for
you."

Then he went out, closing the door after
him.

I turned to Jud, and he pointed his finger to
a letter lying on the mantelpiece. I arose and
picked it up. It bore Cynthia's seal and was
open.

Let us forgive little Miss Pandora. Old
Jupiter ought to have known better. And the
dimpled wife of Bluebeard! That forbidden
door was so tremendously alluring!

I think I should have pulled the letter out
of its envelope had I not feared that this man
would return and find it in my fingers. I
showed the seal to Jud and replaced it on the
mantelpiece.

He slapped his leg. *' Twiggs brought
that/' he said, ** an' he 's gone on to West-
fall's. What does it say ? "

" I did n't read it," I answered.

The man heaved his shoulders up almost to
his ears. ** Quiller," he said, ** you can't
root, if you have a silk nose."

I think I should have fallen, but at this

154 Dwellers in the Hills

moment Nicholas Marsh came back with his
candle, and said we ought to sleep if we wished
an early start in the morning. I followed him
up the bare stairway to my room on the north
side of the house. He placed the candlestick
on the table, promised to call me early, then
bade me good-night and went away.

I watched his broad back disappear in the
shadow of the hall. Then I closed the door
and latched it. Rigid honesty has its disad-
vantages. Here was a man almost persuaded
to insist upon a right that was valid but
unusual, and deeply worried because he had
almost yielded to the urging. It takes good
men to see the fine shades of such a thing.

There was a broad window in this room, with
the bare limbs of the maples brushing against
its casement. I looked out before I went to
bed. Beyond the Valley River, great smoky
shadows cloaked the hills, gilded along their
borders by the rising moon; hills that sat
muffled in the foldings of their robes, waiting
for the end, — waiting for man to play out the
game and quit, and the Great Manager to pull
down his scenery.

The Uses of the Moon 155

I blew out the candle, and presently slept as
one sleeps when he is young. Sometime in
the night I sat bolt upright in the good bed to
listen. I had heard, — or was I dreaming, —
floating up from some far distance, the last
faint echo of that voice of Parson Peppers.

" An* the ravens they did feed him, fare ye well,
fare ye well."

I sprang out of bed and pressed my face
against the window. There was no sound in
the world. Below, the Valley River lay like
a plate of burnished yellow metal. Under
the enchanted moon it was the haunted water
of the fairy. No mortal went singing down
its flood, surely, unless he sailed in the ship
that the tailors sewed together, or went a-
dreaming in that mystic barge rowed by the
fifty daughters of Danaus.

I crept back under the woven coverlid. This
was haunted country, and Parson Peppers was
doubtless snoring in a bed.

CHAPTER XIII

THE SIX HUNDRED

IT b an unwritten law of the Hills that all
cattle bought by the pound are to be
weighed out of their beds, that is, in the early
morning before they have begun to graze.
This is the hour set by immemorial custom.

We were in the saddle while the sun was yet
abed. The cattle were on two great bound-
aries of a thousand acres, sleeping in the deep
blue grass on the flat hilltops. Jud and two
of Marsh's drivers took one line of the ridges,
and Marsh and I took the other.

The night was lifting when we came out on
the line of level hilltops, and through the haze
the sleeping cattle were a flock of squatting
shadows. As we rode in among them the
dozing bullocks arose awkwardly from their

156

The Six Hundred 157

warm beds and stretched their great backs, not
very well pleased to have their morning rest
broken.

We rode about, bringing them into a bunch,
arousing some morose old fellow who slept by
himself in a corner of the hill, or a dozen aristo-
crats who held a bedchamber in some windless
cove, or a straying Ishmaelite hidden in a
broom -sedge hollow, — all displeased with the
interruption of their forty winks before the
sunrise. Was it not enough to begin one's
day with the light and close it with the light ?
What did man mean by his everlasting inroads
on the wholesome ways of nature ? The Great
Mother knew what she was about. All the
people of the fields could get up in the
morning without this cursed row. Whoever
was one of them snoozing in his trundle-
bed after the sun had flashed him a good
morning ?

The home-life of the steer would be healthy
reading in any family. He never worries, and
his temper has no shoal. Either he is con-
tented and goes about his business, or he is
angry and he fights. He is clean, and as

158 Dwellers in the Hills

regular in his habits as a lieutenant of infantry.
To bed on the highlands when the dark comes,
and out of it with the sun. A drink of water
from the brook, and about to breakfast.

We gathered the cattle into a drove, and
started them in a broken line across the hills
toward the road, the huge black muleys stroll-
ing along, every fellow at his leisure. The
sun peeping through his gateway in the east
gilded the tops of the brown sedge and turned
the grass into a sea of gold. Through this
Eldorado the line of black cattle waded in
deep grasses to the knee, — curly-coated beasts
from some kingdom of the midnight in mighty
contrast to this golden country. I might have
been the Merchant's Son transported by some
wicked fairy to a land of wonders, watching,
with terror in his throat, the rebellious jins
under some enchantment of King Solomon
travelling eastward to the sun.

Now a hungry fellow paused to gather a
bunch of the good-tasting grass and was butted
but of the path, and now some curly-shouldered
belligerent roared his defiant bellow and it
went rumbling through the hills. We drove

The Six Hundred 159

the cattle through the open gate of the pasture
and down a long lane to the scales.

Nicholas Marsh seemed another man, and I
felt the first touch of triumph come with the
crisp morning. Woodford was losing. We
had the cattle and there remained only to
drive them in. It is a wonderful thing how
the frost glistening on a rail, or a redbird
chirping in a thicket of purple raspberry briers,
can lift the heart into the sun. Marks and his
crew were creatures of a nightn>are, gone in the
daylight, hung up in the dark hollow of some
oak tree with the bat.

Marsh and the drivers went ahead of the
cattle to the scales, and I followed the drove,
stopping to close the gate and fasten it with its
wooden pin to the old chestnut gate-post.
High up on this gate-post was a worn hole
about as big as a walnut, door to the mansion
of some speckled woodpecker. As I whistled
merrily under his sill, the master of this house
stepped up to his threshold and leered down
at me.

He looked old and immoral, with a mosaic
past, the sort of woodpecker who, if born into

i6o Dwellers in the Hills

a higher estate, would have guzzled rum and
gambled with sailors. His head was bare in
spots, his neck frowsy, and his eyelids scaly.
** Young sir," this debauched old Worldly
Wiseman seemed to say, ** you think you 're
a devil of a fellow merely because it happens
to be morning. Gad sooks! You must be
very young. When you get a trifle further on
with the mischief of living, you will realise
that a bucketful of sunlight does n't run
the devil out of business. Damme, sirrah!
Please to clear out with your accursed whist-
ling."

I left him to cool his head in the morning
breezes.

Nicholas Marsh was waiting for me at the
scales when I arrived. He wished me to see
that they were balanced properly. He ad-
justed the beam, adding a handful of shot or a
nail or kn iron washer to the weights. Then
we put on the fifty-pound test, and then a
horse. When we were satisfied that the scales
were in working order, we weighed the cattle
four at a time. I took down the weights as
Marsh called them, and when we had finished,

The Six Hundred 16 1

the drove was turned into the road toward the
river.

Marsh grasped my hand when I turned to
leave him. '* Quiller," he said, "it 's hard
to guard against a liar, but I do not believe
there was ever a time when I would have re-
fused you these cattle. Your brother has
done me more than one conspicuous kindness.
I would trust him for the cattle if he did not
own an acre."

" Mr. Marsh," I said, *' what lie did Wood-
ford tell you ? ' '

'* I was told," he replied, " that Mr. Ward
had transferred all of his land, and as these
cattle would lose a great deal of money, he did
not intend to pay this loss. I was shown a
copy of the court record, or what purported to
be one, to prove that statement. I do not
think that I ever quite believed, but the proof
seemed good, and I saw no reason for the lie."

He stopped a moment and swept the iron-
grey locks back from his face. ** Now," he
continued, ** I know the reason for that lie.
And I know the paper shown me was spurious.
It was high-handed rascality, but I cannot

zx

1 62 Dwellers in the Hills

connect it with Woodford. It may have
emanated from him, but I do not know that.
The man who told me disclaimed any relation
with him."

** Twiggs! " I said.

** No," he answered, *' it was not Twiggs.
The man was a heifer buyer from the north
country. I would scarcely know him again."

'* Not Twiggs! " I cried, " he was here last
night."

* * I know it, ' ' Marsh answered calmly. * * He
brought me this letter from Miss Cynthia.
Will you carry it back to her, and say that
your brother's word is good enough for Nicho-
las Marsh ? "

He put his hand into his coat and handed
me Cynthia's letter; and I stuffed it into my
pockets without stopping to think. I tried to
thank him for this splendid fidelity to Ward,
but somehow I choked with the words pushing
each other in my throat. He saw it, wished
me a safe drive, and rode away to his house.

He was a type which the Hills will do ill to
forget in the rearing of their sons, a man whose
life was clean, and therefore a man difficult to

The Six Hundred 163

wrong. I should have been sorry to stand be-
fore Nicholas Marsh with a lie in my mouth.
He is gone now to the Country of the Silences.
He was a just man, and to such, even the
gods are accustomed to yield the wall.

I followed slowly after the drove, the broad
dimensions of Woodford's plan at last clear in
my youthful mind. He had put Ward in his
bed, and out of the way. Th6n he had sent a
stranger to these men with a dangerous lie cor-
roborated by a bit of manufactured evidence,
— a lie calculated to put any cattleman on his
guard, and one that could not be tracked back
to its sources.

Then, to make it sure, Twiggs had come
riding like the devil's imps with some new
warning from Cynthia. How could such plan-
ning fail ? And failed it had not but for the
honour of this gentleman, or perhaps some
design of the Unknowable behind the ma-
chinery of the world.

Generation of intriguers ! Here are the two
factors that wreck you. The high captains
of France overlooked the one in the prosecu-
tion of an obscure subordinate. A.nd Absalom,

1 64 Dwellers in the Hills

the first great master of practical politics,
somehow overlooked the other.

In my pocket was the evidence of Cynthia's
perfidy, with the envelope opened, travelling
home, as lies are said to. Ward might doubt
the attitude of this woman when she smoothed
matters with that dimpled mouth of hers, or
crushed me out with her steel-grey eyes; but
he would believe what she had written when
he saw it. Then a doubt began to arise like
the first vapour from the copper pot of the
Arabian fisherman. Could I show it to Ward ?
Marsh had sent it to Cynthia. Could I even
look at it ? I postponed the contest with that
genie.

Suicide is not a more deliberate business
than cattle driving. A bullock must never be
hurried, not even in the early morning. He
must be kept strolling along no faster than he
pleases. If he is hurried, one will presently
have him panting with his tongue out, or
down in a fence corner with the fat melted
around his heart. Yet if he is allowed his
natural gait, he will walk a horse to death.

Remember, he carries fifteen hundred

The Six Hundred 165

pounds, and there are casks of tallow under
his black hide. Besides that, he is an aristo-
crat accustomed to his ease. In large droves
it is advisable to keep the herd in as long and
narrow a line as possible, and to facilitate the
driving, a few bullocks are usually separated
from the others and kept moving in the van as
a sort of pace-setter.

It is surprising how readily the drove falls
into the spirit of this strolling march, some
battle-scarred old bull leading, and the others
following him in the dust.

It is said that neither fools, women, nor
children can drive cattle. The explanation of
this adage is not here assumed, nor its com-
munity of relation. I know the handling of
these great droves is considered business for
an expert. The cattle owner would no sooner
trust a herd to men picked up by the roadway
than the trainmaster would trust the limited
express to a stranger in the railroad station.

If the cattle are hot they must be rested, in
water if possible; if there is no water, then
under some shade. Throw down the fence
and turn them into the stranger's field. If the

1 66 Dwellers in the Hills

stranger is a person of good sense, he will be
glad to assist your necessity. If not, he must
yield to it.

These are laws of the Hills, always remem-
bered as the lawyer remembers the " statute
of frauds." It is impossible to go too slow.
Watch the mouth of the bullock. He is in no
danger until his tongue lolls out at the comer
like a dog's. Then rest him. Let no man go
through your drove. He must stop until it
passes him. If he refuses, he must be per-
suaded. If one bullock runs back, let him
alone ; he will follow. But if two, turn them
at once with a swift dash of the cattle-horse.
Never run a steer. If the cattle are fright-
ened, sing to them, and ride through the
drove. Old-fashioned, swinging, Methodist
hymns are best. Make it loud. The cattle are
not particular about the tune.

I have heard the profane Ump singing Old
Hundred and riding the Bay Eagle up and
down in a bunch of frightened cattle, and it
was a piece of comedy for the gods. I have
heard Jud, with no more tune than a tom-tom,
bellowing the doxology to a great audience of

The Six Hundred 167

PoUed-Angus muleys on the verge of a stam-
pede. And I have sung myself, many a time,
like a circuit rider with a crowded mourner's
bench.

One thing more : know every bullock in your
drove. Get his identity in your mind as you
get the features of an acquaintance, so that
you would recognise him instantly if you met
him coming up at the end of the earth. A
driver in the Hills would not be worth his salt
who did not know every head of his cattle.
Suppose his herd breaks into a field where
there are others of the same breed, or he col-
lides with another drove, or there is a tremend-
ous mix at a tavern. The facility with which
a cattle man learns to recognise every steer in
a drove of hundreds is an eighth wonder of the
world to a stranger. Anyone of us could ride
through a drove of cattle, and when he reached
the end know every steer that followed him in
the road, and I have seen a line reaching for
miles.

Easy with your eyebrows, my masters.
When men are trained to a craft from the time
they are able to cling to a saddle, they are

1 68 Dwellers in the Hills

very apt to exhibit a skill passing for witchcraft
with the uninitiated. I have met many a
grazier, and I have known but one who was
unable to recognise the individual bullock in
his drove, and his name was a byword in the
Hills.

Jud and the Cardinal followed the drove,
and I rode slowly through the cattle, partly to
keep the long line thin, but chiefly to learn
the identity of each steer. I looked for no
mark, nor any especial feature of the bullock,
but caught his identity in the total as the head
waiter catches the identity of a hat. I looked
down at each bullock for an instant, and then
turned to the next one. In that instant I had
the cast of his individuality forever. The
magicians of Pharaoh could not afterwards
mislead me about that bullock. This was not
esoteric skill. Any man in the Hills could do
it. Indeed it was a necessity. There was not
a branded bullock in all this cattle land. What
need for the barbaric custom when every man
knew his cattle as he knew his children ?

Later on, when little men came, at mid-life,
to herding on the plains, they were compelled

The Six Hundred 169

to burn a mark on their cattle. But we who
had bred the beef steer for three-quarters of a
century did no such child's play. How the
crowd at Roy's tavern would have roared at
such baby business. I have seen at this tavern
a great mix of a dozen herds, that looked as
like as a potful of peas, separated by an idle
loafer sitting on a fence, calling out, ** That
one 's Woodford's, an' that one 's Alkire's an'
that one 's Maxwell's, an' the PoUed-Angus
muley belongs to Flave Davisson, an' the old-
fashioned one is Westfield's. He must have
got him in Roane or Nicholas. An' the Dur-
ham 's Queen's, an' the big Holstein belongs
to Mr. Ward, an' the red-faced Hereford is
out of a Greenbrier cow an' goes with the
Carper's. "

By the time I had gotten through the drove
we had reached the crossroads, and I found
Ump waiting with the two hundred cattle of
Westfall. The Bay Eagle was watching the
steers, and Ump was sitting sidewise in his
saddle with his hands around his knees.

I hailed him. '' Did you have a hard job ? "
** Easy as roUin' off a log," he answered.

ti

tt

170 Dwellers in the Hills

*' I thought King David would throw his coat,
but he was smooth-mouthed an* cross-legged
as a peddler."

Did Twiggs get in ? " I asked.

Beat me by a neck/' answered the hunch-
back. ** But I passed him comin' out an' I lit
in to him."
''Fist and skull? "said I.

* * Jaw, ' ' said he. * * I damned every Carper
into fiddlestrings from old Adam to old
Columbus."

" What did he say ? "

* * He said we was the purtiest bunch of idiots
in the kingdom of cowtails."

CHAPTER XIV

RELATING TO THE FIRST LIARS

THE autumn in the Hills is but the after-
noon of summer. The hour of the new
guest is not yet. Still the heat lies on the
earth and runs bubbling in the water. The
little maid trots barefoot and the urchin goes
a-swimming in the elm-hole by the corner of
the meadow. Still the tender grass grows at
the roots of the dead crop, and the little purple
flowers dimple naked in the brown pasture.
Still that Pied Piper of Hamelin, the everlast-
ing Pan, flutes in the deep hollows, squatted
down in the broom-sedge. And still the world
is a land of unending summer, of unfading
flowers, of undying youthfulness. Only for
an hour or so, far in the deep night does the
distant breath of the Frost King come to haunt

171

172 Dwellers in the Hills

the land, and then when the sun flings away
his white samite coverlid it is summer again,
with the earth shining and the water warm.

It was hot mid-morning when the long
drove trailed down toward Horton's Ferry.
The sweat was beginning to trickle in the hair
of the fat cattle. Here and there through the
herd a quarrelsome fellow was beginning to
show the effect of his fighting and the heat.
His eyes were a bit watery in his dusty face,
and the tip of his tongue was slipping at his
lips. The warm sun was getting into the
backs of us all. I had stripped off my coat
and carried it thrown across the horn of the
saddle. Ump rode a mile away in the far
front of the drove, keeping a few steers moving
in the lead, while Jud shifted his horse up and
down the long line. I followed on El Mahdi,
lolling in the big saddle. Far away, I could
hear Ump shout at some perverse steer climb-
ing up against the high road bank, or the crack
of Jud* s driving whip drifted back to me. The
lagging bullocks settled to the rear, and El
Mahdi held them to the mark like a good
sergeant of raw militiamen.

Relating to the First Liars 173

Ump and his leaders had reached the open
common by the ferry when the lon^ line
stopped, and I saw Jud go to the front in a
gallop. I waited for the column to go on, but
it did not, and I began to drive the cattle in,
bunching them up in the road.

Presently Jud came down into the turnpike
and shouted to me. Then he dismounted,
tied the reins around the horn of the saddle,
and started the Cardinal to the rear. The
trained cattle-horse knew very well what he
was to do, and picked his way through the
steers until he reached me. Then he turned
in the road, and I left him to watch the drove
while I went to the front to see what the
trouble was.

Both the Cardinal and the Bay Eagle were
trained to this business and guarded the rear
of the drove like dogs. The rider might lounge
under a shade-tree, kicking up his heels to the
sky. For this work El Mahdi was a trifle too
eccentric, and we did not trust him.

Jud was gone when I reached the little bank
where the road turned into the common of
the ferry. I passed through the van of the

174 Dwellers in the Hills

cattle as they stood idly on the sodded open
swinging their long tails with comfortable in-
difference. Then I came out where I could
see the bank of the river and the blue smoke
trailing up from the chimney of the ferrymen.

Facing the north at the front door of this
house, Ump sat on the Bay Eagle, the reins
down on the mare's neck and the hunchback's
long hands crossed and resting on the horn of
his saddle.

The attitude of the man struck me with a
great fear. About him lurked the atmosphere
of overwhelming defeat. The shadow of some
mighty disaster loomed over against the almost
tragic figure of the motionless hunchback sit-
ting a horse of stone.

In such moments of strain the human mind
has a mysterious capacity for trifles. I noticed
a wisp of dry sedge bloom clinging to the
man's shoulder, — a flimsy detail of the great
picture.

The hunchback made no sign when I rode
by him. What he had seen was still there be-
yond him in the sun. I had eyes; I could see.

On a stone by the landing sat one of the

Relating to the First Liars 175

ferrymen, Danel, his hands in the pockets of
his brown homespun coat. Neither Jud nor
the other brother was anywhere in sight. I
looked up at the steel cable above the man's
head. It ended twenty feet away in the
water.

I arose in the stirrups and searched the bank
for the boat. It was gone. The Valley River
ran f uU, a quarter of a mile of glistening yellow
water, and no way across it but the way of the
bass or the way of the heron.

The human mind has caves into which it can
crawly pits where it hides itself when it wishes
to escape ; dark holes leading back under the
crags of the abyss. This explains the dazed
appearance of one who is told suddenly of a
disaster. The mind has crawled up into these
fastnesses. For the time the distance is great
between it and the body of the man through
which it manifests itself. An enemy has
threatened, and the master has gone to hide
himself. The mind is a coward, afraid always
of the not-mind. Like the frightened child,
it must be given time to creep back to its
abandoned plaything.

176 Dwellers in the Hills

The full magnitude of this disaster to the
ferry came slowly, as when one smooths out a
crumpled map. In the great stillness I heard
a wren twittering in the reeds along the bank,
and I noted a green grasshopper, caught in the
current, swimming for his life.

Then I saw it all to the very end, and I
sickened. I felt as though some painless acci-
dent had removed all the portion of my body
below the diaphragm. It was physical sick-
ness. I doubled over and linked my fingers
across my stomach, my head down almost to
the saddle. Marks and his crew had done the
work for us. The cable had been cut, and the
boat had drifted away or been stolen. We
were on the south side of the Valley River
twirling our thumbs, while they rode back
to their master with the answer, "It is done."

Then, suddenly, I recalled the singing which
I had heard in the night. It was no dream,
that singing. . Peppers had stolen the boat and
floated it away with the current. I could see
Cynthia laughing with Hawk Rufe. Then I
saw Ward, and the sickness left me, and the
tears came streaming through my eyes. I put

Relating to the First Liars 177

my arms down on the horn of the saddle and
sobbed.

Remember, I was only a boy. Men old in
the business of life become accustomed to loss ;
accustomed to fingers snatching away the gain
which they have almost reached up to ; accus-
tomed to the staggering blow delivered by the
Unforeseen. Like gamblers, they learn finally
to look with indifference on the mask that may
disguise the angel, or the death ; on the cur-
tain of to-morrow that may cover an Eldorado
or a tomb. They come to see that the eternal
forces are unknowable, following laws unknow-
able, from the seed sprouting in a handful of
earth to the answer of a woman, '' I do not
love you*"

But the child does not know the truth. He
has been lied to from the cradle ; taught a
set of catchwords, a set of wise saws, a set of
moral rules, logarithms by which the equation
of life could be worked out, all arbitrary, and
many grossly erroneous. He is led to believe
that his father or the schoolmaster has grasped
the scheme of human life and can explain it to
him.

la

178 Dwellers in the Hills

The nurse says it will come out all right, as
though the Unforeseen could be determined
by a secret in her possession. He is satisfied
that these wise ones know. Then he meets the
eternal forces, an event threatens, he marshals
his catchwords, his wise saws, his moral rules,
and they fail him. He retires, beaten, as the
magicians of Egypt retired before God.

His father or the nurse or the schoolmaster
explains with some outlandish fairy story,
shifts the catchword or the saw or the rule, as
a physician shifts the prescription of a con-
sumptive, and returns him to the tremendous
Reality. Again he spreads his hands and
cries the sacred formula, the eternal forces
advance, he stands fast and is flung bleeding
to the wall, or he flees. Afraid, hidden in
some cranny of the rocks, nursing his hurt, the
child begins to see the truth. This passing
from the world as it should be to the world as
it is nearly kills him. It is like the riving of
timber.

Presently I heard Jud speak to me from be-
hind El Mahdi. The full strong voice of the
man was like a dash of cold water in the face.

Relating to the First Liars 179

I sat up ; he bade me join Ump and himself to
discuss what should be done, then turned
around and went back to the house.

I slipped down from El Mahdi, washed my
face in the river, and wiped it dry on my
sleeve. Then I climbed into the saddle and
rode back to where th& little grdup stood be-
fore the door.

There were Ump and Jud, the two ferry-
men, and their ancient mother. Danel was
describing the catastrophe in a low voice,
as one might describe the last illness of a
man whose corpse was waiting in his house
for burial.

" We set Twiggs over pretty late. Then
there was n't anybody else. So we tied up
the boat an' went to bed. Mother sleeps by
the fire. Mother has rheumatiz so she don't
sleep very sound. About midnight she called
me. She was sitting up in the bed with a
shawl around her. ' Danel,' she said, * there 's
something lumbering around the boat. Had n't
you better slip down an' see about it ? ' I
told mother I reckoned it was a swimmin' tree.
Sometimes they hit against the boat when

i8o Dwellers in the Hills

they go down. Then I waked Mart up an'
told him mother heard somethin' bumpin'
against the boat, an' I reckoned it was a swim-
min' tree. Mart was sleepy an' he said he
reckoned it was. Then I turned over an'
went to sleep again. When we got out this
mornin', the cable was broke loose a^n' the
boat swum off. We s'pose," here he paused
and looked gravely at his brother, who as
gravely nodded his head, '' we s'pose the cable
pulled loose somehow."

" It was cut in two," said I.

The ferryman screwed his head around on
his neck as though he had not heard correctly.
** Did you say * cut in two * ? " he repeated.

** Yes," said I, '* cut in two. That cable
was cut in two."

The man began to rub his chin with his
hand. ** I reckon not, Quiller," he said. *' I
reckon there ain't no person ornery enough to
do that."

*' It might be," piped the old woman,
thrusting in. *' There's been sich. Oncet, a
long time ago, when your pap was a boy, goin'
girlin' some, about when he begun a settin' up

Relating to the First Liars i8i

to me, a feller stole the ferryboat, but he was
a terrible gallus feller."

** Granny," said Ump, " the devil ain't dead
by a long shot. There is rapscallions lickin'
plates over the Valley that 's meaner than gar-
broth. They could show the Old Scratch
tricks that would make his eyes stick out so
you could knock *em off with a clapboard."

Danel protested. He pointed out that
neither he nor his brother had ever done any
man a wrong, and therefore no man would
wrong them. It was one of those rules which
children discover are strangely not true. He
said the ferry was for the good of all, and
therefore all would preserve rather than injure
that good. Another wise saw, verbally sound,
but going to pieces under the pitiless logic of
fact.

This man, who had spent his life as one
might spend it grinding at a mill, now, when
he came to reckon with the natures of men,
did it like a child. Ump cut him short.
'* Danel," he said, " you talk like a meetin'-
house. Old Christian cut that cable with a
cold chisel, an' Black Malan or Peppers stole

' I

182 Dwellers in the Hills

your boat. They have nothing against you.
They wanted to stop us from crossin' with
these cattle, an' I guess they 've done it."

Then he turned to me. The vapourings of
the ferryman were of no importance. "Quil-
ler," he said, " we 're in the devil's own mess.
What do you think about it ? "

'* I don't know," I answered; ** what does
Jud think?"

The face of the giant was covered with per-
spiration standing in beads. He clenched his
hands and clamped his wet fists against the
legs of his breeches. " God damn *em! " he
said. It was the most terrible oath that I
have ever heard. Then he closed his mouth.

Ump looked at the man, then rode his horse
over to me.

'* Quiller," he said slowly, '* we 're gone up
unless we can swim the drove across, an' it 's
a hell of a risky job. Do you see that big
eddy ? " and he pointed his finger to the
middle of the Valley River where the yellow
water swung around in a great circle. "If the
steers bunched up in that hole, they 'd drown
like rats."

Relating to the First Liars 183

I looked at the wide water and it scared me.
" Ump," I said, '* how long could they stay
in there without giving out ? "

" They would n't give out," replied the
hunchback, '' if we could keep 'em above the
eddy. A steer can swim as long as a horse if
he ain't crowded. If we could keep 'em goin'
in a long loop, we could cross 'em. If they
bunched up, it would be good-bye, pap."

'' Do you think they would grind in there if
they happened to bunch ? " said I.

" To kindlin'," responded Ump, " if they
ever got at it good."

" Ump," I said, looking him squarely in the
face, " I 'm afraid of it."

The man chewed his thin upper lip. *' So
am I, Quiller," he answered. *' But there
ain't much choosin' ; we either swim 'em or we
go up the spout."

'' Well," said I, *' do we do it, or not do
it?"

The hunchback studied the river. ** Quil-
ler," he said finally, " if we knowed about that
current "

I cut him short. " I '11 find out about the

1 84 Dwellers in the Hills

current/' I said. Then I threw away my hat,
pitched my coat down on the sod and gathered
up my bridle reins.

"Wait!" cried the hunchback. Then he
turned to Jud. ** Wash your face in the tub
by the spout yonder, an' bring up your horse.
Take Danel with you. Open Tolbert's fence
an' put the cattle in the grove. Then come
back here. Quiller *s the lightest ; he 's goin'
to try the current."

Then he swung around and clucked to the
mare. I spoke to El Mahdi and we rode down
toward the river. On the bank Ump stopped
and looked out across the water, deep, wide,
muddy. Then he turnied to me.

'• Had n't you better ride the Bay Eagle ? "
he said. ** She knows more in a minute than
any horse that was ever born."

'* What 's wrong with El Mahdi ? " I said,
piqued a little.

" He ain't steady," responded the hunch-
back; ** an* he knows more tricks than a
meetin'-house rat. Sometimes he swims an'
sometimes he don't swim, an' you can't tell
till you git in."

Relating to the First Liars 185

*' This," said I, " is a case of ' have to/ If
he don't like the top, there 's ground at the
bottom." Then I kicked the false prophet in
the flanks with my heels. The horse was
standing on the edge of the sodded bank.
When my heels struck him, he jumped as far
as he could out into the river.

There was a great splash. The horse dropped
like a stone, his legs stiff as ramrods, his neck
doubled under and his back bowed. It was a
bucking jump and meant going to the bottom.
I felt the water rush up and close over my
head.

I clamped my legs to the horse, held my
breath, and went down in the saddle. I
thought we should never reach the bottom of
that river. The current tugged, trying to pull
me loose and whirl me away. The horse
under me felt like a millstone. The weight of
water pressed like some tremendous thumb.
Then we struck the rock bottom and began to
come up. The sensation changed. I seemed
now to be thrust violently from below against
a weight pressing on my head, as though I
were being used by some force under me to

1 86 Dwellers in the Hills

drive the containing cork out of the bottle in
which we were enclosed. I began to be
troubled for breath, my head rang. The dis-
tance seemed interminable. Then we popped
up on the top of the river, and I filled with
the blessed air to the very tips of my fingers.

The horse blew the water out of his nostrils
and doubled his long legs. I thought he was
going down again, and, seizing the top of the
saddle horn, I loosed my feet in the stirrups.
If El Mahdi returned to the deeps of that
river, he would go by himself.

He stretched out his grey neck, sank until
the water came running over the saddle, and
then began to swim with long, graceful strokes
of his iron legs as though it were the easiest
thing in the world.

CHAPTER XV

WHEN PROVIDENCE IS PAGAN

THE strength of the current did not seem to
be so powerful as I had judged it. How-
ever, its determination was difficult. The
horse swam with great ease, but he was an
extraordinary horse, with a capacity for doing
with this apparent ease everything which it
pleased him to attempt. I do not know
whether this arose from the stirring of larger
powers ordinarily latent, or whether the horse's
manner somehow concealed the amount of the
effort. I think the former is more probable.

Half-way across the river, we were not more
than twenty yards down-stream from the ferry
landing. Ump shouted to turn down. into the
eddy, and I swung El Mahdi around. A
dozen long strokes brought us into the almost

i87

i88 Dwellers in the Hills

quiet water of the great rim to this circle, a
circle that was a hundred yards in diameter, in
which the water moved from the circumference
to the centre with a velocity increasing with
the contracting of its orbit, from almost dead
water in its rim to a whirling eddy in its centre.

I pulled El Mahdi up and let him drift with
the motion of the water. We swung slowly
around the circle, moving inward so gently
that our progress was almost imperceptible.

The panic of men carried out in flood water
can be easily understood. The activity of
any power is very apt to alarm when that
power is controlled by no intelligence. It is
the unthinking nature of the force that strikes
the terror. Death and the dark would lose
much if they lost this attribute. The water
bubbled over the saddle. The horse drifted
like a chip. To my eyes, a few feet above
this flood, the water seemed to lift on all sides,
not unlike the sloping rim of some enormous
yellow dish, in which I was moving gradually
to the centre.

If I should strike out toward the shore, we
should be swimming up-hill, while the current

When Providence is Pagan 189

turning inward was apparently travelling
down. This delusion of grade is well known
to the swimmer. It is the chiefest terror of
great water. Expert swimmers floating easily
in flood water have been observed to turn over
suddenly, throw up their arms, and go down.
This is probably panic caused by believing
themselves caught in the vortex of a cone,
from which there seems no escape, except by
the impossible one of swimming up to its rim,
rising on all sides to the sky.

In a few minutes El Mahdi was in the centre
of the eddy, carried by a current growing
always stronger. In this centre the water
boiled, but it was for the most part because of
a lashing of surface currents. There seemed
to be no heavy twist of the deep water into
anything like a dangerous whirlpool. Still
there was a pull, a tugging of the current to a
centre. Again I was unable to estimate the
power of this drag, as it was impossible to
estimate how much resistance was being
offered by the horse.

In the vortex of the eddy the delusion of
the vast cone was more pronounced. It was one

I90 Dwellers in the Hills

of the dangerous elements to be considered. I
observed the horse closely to determine, if pos-
sible, whether he possessed this delusion. If
he did, there was not the slightest evidence of
it. He seemed to swim on the wide river with
the indifference of floating timber, his head ly-
ing flat, and the yellow waves slipping over him
to my waist. The sun beat into this mighty
dish. Sometimes, when it caught the water
at a proper angle, I was blinded and closed my
eyes. Neither of these things seemed to give
El Mahdi the slightest annoyance. I heard
Ump shout and turned the horse toward the
south shore. He swam straight out of the
eddy with that same mysterious ease that
characterised every effort of this eccentric
animal, and headed for the bank of the river
on the line of a bee. He struck the current
beyond the dead water, turned a little up
stream and came out on the sod not a hundred
paces below the ferry. Both Ump and Jud
rode down to meet me.

El Mahdi shook the clinging water from
his hide and resumed his attitude of careless
indifference.

When Providence is Pagan 191

"Great fathers!" exclaimed Jud, looking
the horse over, '' you ain't turned a hair on
him. He ain't even blowed. It must be
easy swimmin'."

'' Don't fool yourself/' said the hunchback.
*' You can't depend on that horse. He 'd let
on it was easy if it busted a girt."

'' It was easy for him," I said, rising to the
defence.

'' Ho, ho," said Ump, " I would n't think
you 'd be throwin' bokays after that duckin'.
I saw him. It was n't so killin' easy."

•' It could n't be so bad," said Jud; " the
horse ain't a bit winded."

'' Laddiebuck," cried the hunchback,
" you '11 see before you get through. That
current 's bad."

I turned around in the saddle. '' Then
you 're not going to put them in ? " I said.

*' Damn it! " said the hunchback, " we 've
got to put 'em in."

'* Don't you think we '11 get them over all
right ? " said I, bidding for the consolation of
hope.

'* God knows," answered the hunchback.

192 Dwellers in the Hills

" It 'U be the toughest sleddin' that we ever
went up against." Then he turned his mare
and rode back to the house of the ferrymen,
and we followed him.

Ump stopped at the door and called to the
old woman. ** Granny," he said, " set us out
a bite." Then he climbed down from the Bay
Eagle, one leg at a time, as a spider might
have done.

* ' Quiller, ' ' he called to me, * ' pull off your
saddle, an' let Jud feed that long-legged son
of a seacook. He '11 float better with a full
belly."

Jud dismounted from the Cardinal. ** When
does the dippin' begin ?" he said. ** Mornin'
or afternoon service ? "

The hunchback squinted at the sun. " It 's
eleven o'clock now," he answered. ** In an
hour we '11 lock horns with Hawk Rufe an'
hell an' high water, an' the devil keeps what
he gits."

Jud took of! the saddles and fed the horses
shelled corn in the grass before the door, and
after the frugal dinner we waited for an hour.
The hunchback was a good general. When

When Providence is Pagan 193

he went out to the desperate sally he would
go with fresh men and fresh horses. I spent
that hour on my back.

Across the road under the chestnut trees the
black cattle rested in the shade, gathering
strength for the long swim. On the sod be-
fore the door the horses rolled, turning entirely
over with their feet in the air. Jud lay with
his legs stretched out, his back to the earth,
and his huge arms folded across his face.

Ump sat doubled up on the skirt of his
saddle, his elbows in his lap, his long fingers
linked together, and the shaggy hair straggling
across his face. He was the king of the
crooked men, planning his battle with the river
while his lieutenants slept with their bellies to
the sun.

I was moving in some swift dream when the

stamping of the horses waked me and I

jumped up. Jud was tightening the girth on

El Mahdi. The Cardinal stood beside him

bridled and saddled. Ump was sitting on the

Bay Eagle, his coat and hat off, giving some

order to the ferrymen who were starting to

bring up the cattle. The hunchback was
13

194 Dwellers in the Hills

saving every breath of his horses. He looked
like some dwarfish general of old times.

I climbed up on El Mahdi bareheaded, in
my shirt sleeves, as I had ridden him before.
Jud took of! his coat and hat and threw them
away. Then he pulled off his shirt, tied it in
a knot to the saddle-ring, tightened the belt
of his breeches, and got on his horse naked to
the waist. It was the order of the hunchback.

" Throw 'em away," he said; '* a breath in
your horse will be worth all the duds you can
git in a cart."

Danel and Mart laid down the fence and
brought the cattle into the common by the
ferry. Directed by the hunchback they
moved the leaders of the drove around to the
ferry landing. The great body of the cattle
filled the open behind the house. The six
hundred black itiuleys made the arc of a tre-
mendous circle, swinging from the ferry land-
ing around to the road. It was impossible to
get farther up the river on this side because of
a dense beech thicket running for a quarter of
a mile above the open.

It was our plan to put the cattle in at the

When Providence is Pagan 195

highest point, a few at a time, and thereby
establish a continuous line across the river. If
we could hold this line in a reasonable loop,
we might hope to get over. If it broke and
the cattle drifted down-stream we would prob-
ably never be able to get them out.

When the drove stood as the hunchback
wished it, he rode down to the edge of the
river, Jud and I following him. I felt the
powerful influence exerted by the courage of
this man. He leaned over and patted the silk
shoulders of the Bay Eagle. ** Good girl," he
said, *' good girl." It was like a last caress, a
word spoken in the ear of the loved one on the
verge of a struggle sure to be lost, the last
whisper carrying all the devotion of a life-
time. Did the man at heart believe we
could succeed ? If the cattle were lost, did
he expect to get out with his life ? I think
not.

Against this, the Cardinal and his huge
naked rider contrasted strangely. They re-
presented brute strength marching out with
brute fearlessness into an unthinking struggle.
Fellpvirg and niat^S; these, the bronze giant

196 Dwellers in the Hills

and his horse. They might go under the yel-
low water of the Valley River, but it would
be the last act of the last struggle.

As for me, I think I failed to realise the
magnitude of this desperate move. I saw but
hazily what the keen instinct of the hunch-
back saw so well, — all the possibilities of disas-
ter. I went on that day as an aide goes with
his general into a charge. I lacked the sense
of understanding existing between the other
* men and their horses, but I had in its stead an
all-powerful faith in the eccentric El Mahdi.
No matter what happened, he would come out
of it somehow.

Domestic cattle will usually follow a horse.
It was the plan that I should go first, to lead
fifty steers put in with me. Then Jud should
follow to keep the bunch moving, while Ump
and the two ferrymen fed the line, a few at a
time, keeping it unbroken, and as thin as pos-
sible.

This was the only plan offering any shadow
of hope. We could not swim the cattle in
small bunches because each bunch would re-
quire one or two drivers^ and the best horse

When Providence is Pagan 197

would go down on his third trip. That course
was out of the question, and this was the only
other.

I think Ump had another object in putting
me before the drove. If trouble came, I
would not be caught in the tangle of cattle. I
rode into the river, and they put the fifty lead-
ers in behind me. This time El Mahdi lowered
himself easily into the water and began to
swim. I held him in as much as I could, and
looked back over my shoulder.

The muleys dropped from the sod bank,
went under to their black noses, came up,
shook the water from their ears, and struck
out, following the tail of the horse. They all
swam deep, the water running across the
middle of their backs, their long tails, the tips
of their shoulders, and their quaint inky faces
visible above the yellow water.

One after another they took the river until
there were fifty behind me. Then Jud rode
in, and the advance of the line was under way.
Ump shouted to swing with the current as far
as I could without getting into the eddy, and
I forced El Mahdi gradually down-stream.

198 Dwellers in the Hills

holding his bit with both hands to make him
swim as slow as he could.

We seemed to creep to the middle of the
river. A Polled-Angus bullock with an irregu-
lar white streak running across his nose led the
drove, following close at the horse's tail. That
steer was Destiny. No criminal ever watched
the face of his judge with more desperate in-
terest than I watched the dish-face of that
muley. I was now at the very middle of the
river, and the turn must be made against the
current. * Would the steer follow me, or
would he take the natural line of least resist-
ance into the swinging water of the eddy ? It
was not a dozen yards below, whirling around
to its boiling centre. The steer swam almost
up to the horse's tail. I turned £1 Mahdi
slowly against the current, and watched the
black bullock over my shoulder. He turned
after the horse. The current struck him in
the deep forequarters ; he swung out below the
horse, threw his big chest to the current, and
followed El Mahdi's tail like a fish following a
bait. I arose in the stirrups and wiped the
sweat off my face with my sleeve.

When Providence is Pagan 199

I could have shouted as I looked back. Jud
and the fifty were turning the loop as though
they were swinging at the end of a pendulum,
every steer following his fellow like a sheep.
Jud's red horse was the only bit of colour
against that long line of black bobbing heads.

Behind him a string of swimming cattle
reached in a long curve to the south bank of the
Valley River. We moved slowly up the north
curve of the long loop to the ferry landing.
It was vastly harder swimming against the cur-
rent, but the three-year-old steer is an animal
of great strength. To know this, one has but
to look at his deep shoulders and his massive
brisket. The yellow water bubbled up over
the backs of the cattle. The strong current
swung their bodies around until their tails were
down-stream, and the little waves danced in
fantastic eddies around their puffing muzzles.
But they clung to the crupper of El Mahdi
with dogged tenacity, and when he climbed
the north bank of the Valley River, the blazed
face of the PoUed-Angus leader came up out of
the water at his heels.

I rode out on the good hard grbund, and

200 Dwellers in the Hills

turned the horse's head toward the river. My
heart sang and shouted under my shirt. The
very joy of what I saw seemed to fill my throat
choking full. The black heads dotted across
the river might have been strung on a string.
There were three hundred cattle in that water.

Jud and the first fifty were creeping up
the last arm of the mighty curve, swimming
together like brothers, the Cardinal sunk to
his red head, and the naked body of his rider
glistening in the sun.

When they reached the bank below me, I
could restrain my joy no longer. I rose in the
stirrups and whooped like the wildest savage
that ever scalped a settler. I think the devil's
imps sleeping somewhere must have heard that
whooping.

CHAPTER XVI

THROUGH THE BIG WATER

CROWDS of cattle, like mobs, are strangely
subject to some sudden impulse. Any
seamy-faced old drover will illustrate this fact
with stories till midnight, telling how Alkire's
cattle resting one morning on Bald Knob sud-
denly threw up their heads and went crashing
for a mile through the underbrush ; and how a
line of Queen's steers charged on a summer
evening and swept out every fence in the Ty-
gart's valley, without a cause so far as the
human eye could see and without a warning.

Three hundred cattle had crossed, swimming
the track of the loop as though they were
fenced into it, and I judge there were a hun-
dred in the water, when the remainder of the
drove on the south shore made a sudden bolt

201

202 Dwellers in the Hills

for the river. The move was so swift and
uniform, and the distance to the water so
short, that Ump and the ferrymen had barely
time to escape being swept in with the steers.
The whole drove piled up in the river and
began to swim in a black mass toward the
north shore. I saw the Bay Eagle sweep
down the bank and plunge into the river below
the cattle. I could hear Ump shouting, and
could see the bay mare crowding the lower
line of the swimming cattle.

The very light went out of the sky. We
forced our horses into the river up to their
shoulders, and waited. The cattle half-way
across came out all right, but when the mass
of more than two hundred reached the loop of
the curve, they seemed to waver and crowd
up in a bunch. I lost my head and plunged
El Mahdi into the river. " Come on," I
shouted, and Jud followed me.

If Satan had sent some guardian devil to
choose for us an act of folly, he could not
have chosen better than I. It is possible that
the cattle would have taken the line of the
leaders against the current if we had kept out

Through the Big Water 203

of the river, but when they saw our horses
they became bewildered, lost their sense of
direction and drifted down into the eddy, — a
great tangle of fighting cattle.

We swung down-stream, and taking a long
circle came in below the drove as it drifted
around in the outer orbit of the eddy. The
crowd of cattle swam past, butting each other,
and churning the water under their bellies, led
by a half-blood Aberdeen-Angus steer with a
•ring in his nose. Half-way around we met
Ump. He was a terrible creature. His shirt
was in ribbons, and his hair was matted to his
head. He was trying to force the Bay Eagle
into the mass of cattle, and he was cursing
like a fiend.

I have already said that his mare knew more
than any other animal in the Hills. She
dodged here and there like a water rat, slip-
ped in among the cattle and shot out when
they swung together. On any other horse
the hunchback would have been crushed to
pulp.

We joined him and tried to drive a wedge
through the great tangle to split it in half, Jud

204 Dwellers in the Hills

and the huge Cardinal for a centre. We got
half-way in and were flung off like a plank.

We floated down into the rim of the eddy
below the cattle, spread out, and endeavoured^
to force the drove up stream. We might as
well have ridden against a floating log-jam.
The mad, bellowing steers swam after their
leader, moving in toward the vortex of the
eddy. The half-blood Aberdeen- Angus, whom
the cattle seemed to follow, was now on the
inner border of the drove, the tangle of steers
stretched in a circle around him. It was clear
that in a very few minutes he would reach the
centre, the mass of cattle would crowd down
on him, and the whole bunch would go to the
bottom. We determined to make another
effort to break through this circle, and if pos-
sible capture the half-blood and force him out
toward the shore. A more dangerous under-
taking could not be easily imagined.

The chances of driving this steer out were
slight if we should ever reach him. The pos-
sibility of forcing a way in was remote, and if
we succeeded in penetrating to the centre of
the jam and failed to break it, we should

Through the Big Water 205

certainly be wedged in and crushed. If Ump's
head had been cool, I do not think he would
ever have permitted me to join in such mad-
ness. We were to select a loose place in the
circle, the Cardinal and El Mahdi to force an
opening, and the Bay Eagle to go through if
she could.

We waited while the cattle passed, bellowing
and thrashing the water, — an awful mob of
steers in panic. Presently in this circle there
was a rift where a bull, infuriated by the
crowding, swam by, fighting to clear a place
around him. He was a tremendous creature,
glistening black, active and dangerous as a
wild beast. He charged the cattle around
him, driving them back like a battering ram.
He dived and butted and roared like some
sea monster gone mad. Ump shouted, and
we swam into the open rift against this bull,
Jud leading, and El Mahdi at his shoulder.

The bull fighting the cattle behind him did
not see us until the big sorrel was against him.
Then he swung half around and tried to butt.
This was the danger which we feared most.
The ram of a muley steer is one of the most

2o6 Dwellers in the Hills

powerful blows delivered by any animal. For
this reason, no bull with horns is a match for
a muley. The driving power of sixteen hun-
dred pounds of bone and muscle is like the
ram of a ship. Striking a horse fair, it would
stave him in as one breaks an egg shell. Jud
leaned down from his horse and struck the bull
on the nose with his fist, beating him in the
nostrils. The bull turned and charged the
cattle behind him. We crowded against him,
using the mad bull for a great driving wedge.

I have never seen anything in the world to
approach the strength or the fury of this
muley. With him we broke through the circle
of steers forcing into the centre of the eddy.
We had barely room for the horses by crowd-
ing shoulder to shoulder to the bull. The
cattle closed in behind us like bees swarming
in a hive.

I was accustomed to cattle all my life. I
had been among them when they fought each
other, bellowing and tearing up the sod;
among them when they charged ; among them
when they stampeded ; and I was not afraid.
But this caldron of boiling yellow water filled

Through the Big Water 207

with cattle was a hell-pot. In it every steer,
gone mad, seemed to be fighting for dear life.

I caught something of the terror of the
cattle, and on the instant the delusion of the
cone rising on all sides returned. The cattle
seemed to be swarming down upon us from the
sides of this yellow pit. I looked around.
The Bay Eagle was squeezing against El
Mahdi. Jud was pressing close to the nose of
the bull, keeping him turned against the cattle
by great blows rained on his muzzle, and we
were driving slowly in like a glut.

My mouth became suddenly dry to the
root of my tongue. I dropped the reins and
whirled around in the saddle. Ump, whose
knee was against El Mahdi's flank, reached
over and caught me by the shoulder. The
grip of his hand was firm and steady, and it
brought me back to my senses, but his face
will not be whiter when they lay hhn finally
in the little chapel at Mount Horeb.

As I turned and gathered up the reins, the
water was boiling over the horses. Some-
times we went down to the chin, the horses
entirely under; at other times we were flung

2o8 Dwellers in the Hills

up almost out of the water by the surging of
the cattle. The Cardinal was beginning to
grow tired. He had just swam across the
river and half-way back, and been then forced
into this tremendous struggle without time to
gather his breath. He was a horse of gigantic
stature and great endurance, but his rider
was heavy. He had been long in the water,
and the jamming of the cattle was enough to
wear out a horse built of ship timber.

His whole body was sunk to the nose and
he went entirely under with every surge of
the bull. The naked back of Jud reeked with
sweat, washed off every minute with a flood
of muddy water, and the muscles on his huge
shoulders looked like folds of brass.

He held the bridle-rein in his teeth and
bent down over the saddle so as to strike the
bull when it tried to turn back. At times the
man, hofse, and bull were carried down out of
sight.

Suddenly I realised that we were on the in-
side. The river was a bedlam of roars and
bellows. We had broken through the circle
of cattle, and it drifted now in two segments.

Through the Big Water 209

crowding in to follow the half-blood Aberdeen-
Angus. This steer passed a few yards below
us, making for the centre of the eddy. As he
went by, Ump shot out on the Bay Eagle,
dodged through the cattle, and, coming up with
the steer, reached down and hooked his finger
in the ring which the half-blood wore in his
nose. Then, holding the steer's muzzle against
the shoulder of the mare, he struck out
straight through the vortex of the eddy,
making for the widest opening in the broken
circle.

I watched the hunchback breathless. It
was not difficult to lead the steer. An urchin
could have done it with a rope in the nose-
ring, but the two segments of the circle might
swing together at any moment, and if they
did Ump would be penned in and lost and we
would be lost also, locked up in this jam of
steers.

For a moment the hunchback and the steer
passed out of sight in the boiling eddy, then
they reached the open, went through it, and
struck up-stream for the ferry landing.

The cattle on the inner side of the circle

X4

2IO Dwellers in the Hills

followed the Aberdeen - Angus, streaming
through the opening in a great wedge that
split the jam into the two wings of ao enorm-
ous V. The whole drove swung out and fol-
lowed in two lines, as one has seen the wild
geese following their pilot to the south.

Jud and I, wedged in, were tossed about by
the surging of the cattle, as the jam broke.
We were protected a little by the bull, whose
strength seemed inexhaustible. Every mo-
ment I looked to see some black head rise
under the fore quarters of El Mahdi, throw
him over, and force him down beneath the

«

bellies of the cattle, or some muley charge the
fighting bull and crush Jud and his horse.
But the very closeness of the jamming saved
us from these dangers.

It was almost impossible for a bullock to
turn. We were carried forward by the press
as a child is carried with a crowds When the
cattle split into the wings of the V, we were
flung of! and found ourselves swimming in
open water between the two great lines.

I felt like a man lifted suddenly from a
dungeon into the sunlit world. I was weak.

Through the Big Water 2 1 1

I caught hold of the horn, settled down nerve-
less in the saddle, and looked around me.
The cattle were streaming past in two long
lines for the shore, led by Ump and the Aber-
deen-Angus, now half-way up the north arm
of the loop.

The river was still roaring with the bellowings
of the cattle, as though all the devils of the
water howled with fury at this losing of their
prey.

The steers had now room to swim in, and
they would reach the shore. I looked down
at El Mahdi. He floated easily, pumping the
air far back into his big lungs. He had been
roundly jammed, but he was not exhausted,
and I knew he would be all right when he got
his breath.

Then I looked for Jud. He was a few yards
below me, staring at the swimming cattle.
The water was rising to his armpits. It
poured over the Cardinal, and over the saddle
horn. It was plain that the horse was going
down. Only his muzzle hung above the
water, with the nostrils distended.

I shouted to Jud. He kicked his feet out

212 Dwellers in the Hills

of the stirrups, dropped into the water and
caught his horse by the shank of the bit. He
went down until the water bubbled against his
chin. But he held the horse's head above the
river, treading water and striking out with his
free arm.

I turned El Mahdi and swam to the Card-
inal. When I reached him I caught the bit on
my side, and together Jud and El Mahdi held
the exhausted horse until he gathered his
breath and began to swim. Presently, when
he had gotten the air back in his chest, I took
the bridle-rein, and Jud, loosing his hold on
the bit, floated down behind the cattle, and
struck out for the shore. I saw him climb the
bank among the water beeches when El
Mahdi and the Cardinal came up out of the
river at the ferry landing behind the la^t
bullock.

CHAPTER XVII

ALONG THE HICKORY RIDGES

THE human analyst, jotting down in his
note-book the motives of men, is often
strangely misled. The master of a great
financial house, working day and night in an
ofHce, is not trading away his life for a system
of railroads. Bless you! sir, he would not
give a day of those precious hours for all the
steel rails in the world. Nor is my lady
spending her life like water to reach the
vantage-point where she may entertain Sir
Henry. That tall, keen-eyed woman with
the brains crowded in her head does not care a
snap of her finger if the thing called Sir Henry
be flying to the devil.

Look you a little further in, good analyst.

It is the passion of the chess-player. Each of

213

214 Dwellers in the Hills

these is up to the shoulders in the grandest
game you ever dreamed of. Other skilful
men and other quick-witted women are there
across the table with Chance a-meddling. The
big plan must be carried out. The iron trump-
ery and the social folderol are bits of stufi that
have to be juggled about in this business.
They have no more intrinsic value than a bank
of fog. Providence made a trifling miscalcul-
ation when it put together the human mind.
As the thing works, there is nothing worth
while but the thrills of the game. And these
thrills ! How they do play the devil with the
candle ! Thus it comes about that when one
pulls his life or his string of playthings out of
a hole he does not seem to have made a gain
by it. I learned this on the north bank of the
Valley River, listening to Ump's growls as he
ran his hands over the Bay Eagle, and the re-
plies of Jud lying by the Cardinal in the sun.

Gratitude toward the man helper is about as
rare as the splinters of the true cross. When
one owes the debt to Providence, one depends
always upon the statute of limitations to bar
it. Here sat these grateful gentlemen, lately

Along the Hickory Ridges 215

returned by a sort of miracle to the carpet of
the green sod, swapping gibes like a couple of
pirates.

*' Old Nick was grabbin' for us this time,"
said Jud, " an* he mighty nigh got us."

** I reckon," answered Ump, " a feller ought
to git down on his marrow-bones."

*' I would n't try it," said Jud. ** You
might cork yourself."

" It was like the Red Sea," said I; '* all the
cattle piled up in there, and going round and
round."

'* Just like the good book tells about it,"
added Ump; ** only we was them Egyptians,
a-flounderin' an' a-spittin' water."

'* Boys," said Jud, ''that Pharaoh -king
ought to a been bored for the holler horn.
I 've thought of it often."
Why?" I asked.

You see," he answered, ** after all them
miracles, locusts, an' frogs an' sich, he might
a knowed the Lord was a-layin' for him. An'
when he saw that water piled up, he ought a
lit out for home. 'Stead of that, he went a-
sailin' in like the unthinkin' horse."

<<

<<

2i6 Dwellers in the Hills

The hunchback cocked his eye and began to
whistle. Then he broke into a ditty :

" When Pharaoh rode down to the ragin' Red Sea,

Rode down to the ragin' Red Sea,
He hollered to Moses, ' Just git on to me,
A-ridin' along through the sea.'

'* An' Moses he answered to hoUerin' Pharaoh,

The same as you 'd answer to me,
* You '11 have to have bladders tied on to your
back,

If you ever git out of the sea.'

t n

Thus I learned that the man animal long ago
knocked Young Gratitude on the head, heaved
him overboard into a leaky gig, and left him
behind to ogle the seagulls. He is a healthy
pirate, this man animal, accustomed with great
complacency to maroon the trustful stowaway
when he comes to nose about the cargo of his
brig, or thrusts his pleading in between the
cutthroat and his pleasant sins.

As for me, I was desperately glad to be safe
out of that pot of muddy water. I was ready
like the apostle of old time to build here a
tabernacle, or to go down on what Ump called

Along the Hickory Ridges 217

my '* marrow -bones." As it was, I dis-
mounted and hugged EI Mahdi, covering up
in his wet mane a bit of trickling moisture
strangely like those tears that kept getting in
the way of my being a man.

I had tried to laugh, and it went string-halt.
I had tried to take a hand in the passing
gibes, and the part limped. I had to do some-
thing, and this was my most dignified emo-
tional play. The blue laws of the Hills gave
this licence. A fellow might palaver over his
horse when he took a jolt in the bulwarks of
his emotion. You, my younger brethren of
the great towns, when you knock your heads
against some corner of the world and go a-
bawling to your mother's petticoat, will never
know what deeps of consolation are to be
gotten out of hugging a horse when one's
heart is aching.

I wondered if it were all entirely true, or
whether I should knock my elbow against
something and wake up. We were on the
north bank of the Valley River, with every head
of those six hundred steers. Out there they
were, strung along the road, shaking their wet

2i8 Dwellers in the Hills

coats like a lot of woolly dogs, and the after-
noon sun wavering about on their shiny backs.
And there was Ump with his thumbs against
the fetlocks of the Bay Eagle, and Jud trying
to get his copper skin into the half -dried shirt,
and the hugged El Mahdi staring away at the
brown hills as though he were everlastingly
bored.

I climbed up into the saddle to keep from
executing a fiddler's jig, and thereby proving
that I suffered deeply from the curable disease
of youth.

We started the drove across the hills toward
Roy*s tavern, Jud at his place in front of the
steers, walking in the road with the Cardinal's
bridle under his arm, and Ump behind, while
El Mahdi strayed through the line of cattle to
keep them moving. The steers trailed along
the road between the rows of rail fence run-
ning in zigzag over the country to the north.
I sat sidewise in my big saddle dangling my
heels.

There were long shadows creeping eastward
in the cool hollows when we came to the shop
of old Christian the blacksmith. I was moving

Along the Hickory Ridges 219

along in front of the drove, fingering El
Mahdi's mane and whistling lustily, and I
squared him in the crossroads to turn the
plodding cattle down toward Roy's tavern. I
noticed that the door of the smith's shop was
closed and the smoke creeping in a thin line
out of the mud top of the chimney, but I did
not stop to inquire if the smith were about his
work. I held no resentment against the man.
He had doubtless cut the cable, as Ump had
said, but his provocation had been great.

The settlement was now made fair, skin for
skin, as the devil put it once upon a time. I
whistled away and counted the bullocks as
they went strolling by me, indicating each
fellow with tny finger. Presently Ump came
at the tail of the drove and pulled up the Bay
Eagle under the tall hickories.

** Well," he said, '* the old shikepoke must
be snoozin*."

It 's pretty late in the day," said I.
He lost a lot of sleep last night,'' re-
sponded Ump. ** When a feller travels with
the devil in the night, he can't work with the
Lord in the day."

tt

I <

220 Dwellers in the Hills

«

** He has n't been at it long," said I, point-
ing to the faint smoke hovering above the
chimney; ** or the fire would be out."

'• Right," said Ump. " An, that 's a horse
of another colour. I think I shall take a
look."

With that he swung down from his saddle,
crossed to the shop, and flung open the door.
Then he began to whistle softly.

" Hot nest," he said, ** but no sign of the
shikepoke."

'* He may be hiding out until we pass,''
said I.

** Not he," responded the hunchback.

Then I took an inspiration. ** Ump," I
cried, " I '11 bet the bit out of the bridle that
he saw us coming and lit out to carry the
word!"

The hunchback struck his fist against the
door of the shop. *' Quiller," he said, *' you
ought to have sideboards on your noggin.
That 's what he 's done, sure as the Lord
made little apples! "

Then he got on his horse and rode her
through the hickories out to the brow of the

Along the Hickory Ridges 221

hill. Presently I heard him call, and went to
him with El Mahdi on a trot. He pointed his
finger north across the country and, following
the pointed finger, I saw the brown coat of a
man disappearing behind a distant ridge. It
was too far away to see who it was that
travelled in that coat, but we knew as well as
though the man's face had passed by our
stirrups.

** Hoity-toity!" said Ump, ** what doin's
there '11 be when he gits in with the news! "

'* The air will be blue," said I.

*' Streaked and striped," said he.

'' I should like to see Woodford champing
the bit," said I.

'* I 'd give a leg for the sight of it," replied
the hunchback, " an' they could pick the leg."

I laughed at the hunchback's of!er to the
Eternal Powers. Of all the generation of
rogues, he was least fitted to barter away his
underpinning.

We rode back to the shop and down the hill
after the cattle, Ump drumming on the pom-
mel with his fingers and firing a cackle of fan-
tastic monologue. ** Quiller," he said, ** do

222 Dwellers in the Hills

you think Miss Cynthia will be glad to see the
drove comin' down the road ? "

Happy as a June bug/' said I.

Old Granny Lanham/' continued the
hunchback, ** used to have a song that went

like this :

i

'* ' God made man, an' man made money ;
God made bees, an' bees made honey ;
God made woman, an' went away to rest Him,
An' along come the devil, an' showed her how to
best Him.' "

Meaning what ? '' said I.
Meanin'," responded Ump, " that if you
think you know what a woman 's goin' to do,
you 're as badly fooled as if you burned your
shirt."

'* Ump," I said sharply, ** what do you
know about women ? "

** Nothin' at all," said he, '* nothin' at all.
But I know about mares. An' when they lay
back their ears, it don't always mean that
they 're goin' to kick you."

CHAPTER XVIII
BY THE UGHT OF A LANTERN

IT -was a hungry, bareheaded youngster that
rode up at sundown to Roy's tavern. The
yellow mud clinging to my clothes had dried
in cakes, and as my hat was on the other side
of the Valley River, my head, as described by
Ump, was a "middlin' fair brush heap."

Adam Roy gaped in astonishment when I
called him to the door to ask about a field
for the cattle.

" Law! Quiller," he cried, " where in the
name o' fathers have you been a-wallerin' ?"

"We went swimming in the Valley," I
answered.

"Mercy sakes!" said the tavern-keeper,
" you must a mired down. You 've got mud
enough on you to daub a chimney, an' your

224 Dwellers in the Hills

head looks like a chaff -pen on a windy mornin\
What did you go swimmin' for ? "
Hobson's choice," said I.
Was the ferry washed out ? " he asked.

** It was out," I said. '* How it got out is
a heifer of another drove."

** An' did you swim the cattle ? " The man
leaned out of the door.

I pointed my finger to the drove coming
down the road. *' There they are," said I.
** Do you see any wings on them ? "

** Lord love me! " cried the tavern-keeper,
" I 'd never put cattle in the Valley when it
was up, unless I wanted to see their tails a
stickin' out o' the drift-wood. Why did n't
you wait until they fixed the ferry ? What
was your hurry ?"

'* No matter about that hurry," said I.
*' Just now we have another hurry that is a
trifle more urgent. We want a field for the
cattle, and corn and clover hay and plenty of
bedding for the horses, and something hot for
supper. We are all as hungry as Job's
turkey."

*' One thing at a time, Quiller," said the

By the Light of a Lantern 225

man, spreading his hands. " Turn the cattle
into the north boundary an' come along to
the house."

I went back up the road, threw down the
bars to the pasture, and counted the cattle as
they went strolling in. The PoUed-Angus
muleys seemed none the worse for their long
swim, and they began to crop the brown grass
the moment they were out in the field.

Jud and the Cardinal came up after the first
hundred, and took a place by El Mahdi.

I think I know now the joy of the miser
counting his gold pieces at midnight in his
cellar, looking at each yellow eagle lovingly,
and passing his finger over the milled rim of
each hew-minted coin, while the tallow candle
melts down on the bench beside him.

I could close my eyes and see a black mass
going down in the yellow water, with here and
there a bullock drifting exhausted in the eddy,
or heaps of bloated bodies piled up on a sand-
bar of the Valley River. And there, with my
eyes wide open, was the drove spreading out
along the hillside as it passed in between the
two chestnut bar-posts.

226 Dwellers in the Hills

I was as happy as a man can be when his
Armada sails in with its sunlit canvas; and
yet, had that Armada gone to pieces on a coast,
I think my tears over its wreckage had been
the deeper emotion. Our conception of dis-
aster outrides by far our conception of felicity.

It is a thing of striking significance that old,
wise poets have on occasion written of hell so
vividly that we hear the fire crackle and see
the bodies of the lost sizzling ; but not one of
them, burning the candle of genius at both
ends, has ever been able to line out a heaven
that a man would live in if he were given the
•key to it.

Ump came along after the last of the cattle
and burst into a great laugh. " Damme," he
said, " you 're as purty a pair of muskrats as
ever chawed a root. Why don't you put up
the bars instead of settin' gawkin' at the
cattle ! They 're all there. ' '

Suppose they were not all there ? " said I.
Quiller," said he, " I 'm not goin' back
over any burnt bridges. When the devil
throws a man in a sink hole an' the Lord comes
along an' pulls him out, that man ought to go

ii

ii

By the Light of a Lantern 227

on about his business an' not hang around the
place until the devil gits back."

Jud got down from his horse and began to
lay up the bars. " But," said he, ** suppose
we hadn't split the bunch ? "

" Jud," answered the hunchback, " hell 's
full of people who spent their lives a-'sposin'."

Jud jammed the top bar into the chestnut
post. *' Still," he persisted, " where would
we a been now ? "

" If you must know," said Ump, " we *d a
been heels up in the slime of the Valley with
the catfish playin' pussy-in-the-corner around
the butt of our ears."

We trotted over to the tavern, flung the
bridle-reins across the hitching post, and went
bursting into the house. Roy was wiping his
oak table. '* Mother Hubbard," cried the
hunchback, " set out your bones. We 're as
empty as bee gums."

The man stopped with his hands resting on
the cloth. *' God save us! " he said, " if you
eat like you look, it '11 take a barbecue bull to
fill you. Draw up a chair an' we '11 give you
what we 've got."

228 Dwellers in the Hills

" Horses first/' said Ump, taking up a split
basket.

'* Suit yourself," said Roy; " there 's no-
body holdin' you, an* there 's com in the crib,
hay in the mow, an' oats in the entry."

Jud and I followed Ump out of the house,
put the horses in the log stable, pulled off the
bridles and saddles, and crammed the racks
with the sweet-smelling clover hay. Then we
brushed out the mangers and threw in the
white corn. When we were done we went
swaggering back to the house.

From threatened disaster we had come
desperately ashore. Whence arises the strange
pride of him who by sheer accident slips
through the fingers of Destiny ?

We ate our supper under the onslaughts of
the tavern-keeper. Roy had a mind to know
why we hurried. He scented some reason
skulking in the background, and he beat across
the field like a setter.

" You '11 want to get out early," he said.
*' Men who swim cattle won't be lettin' grass
grow under their feet."

'* Bright an' early," replied Ump.

By the Light of a Lantern 229

" It appears like," continued Roy, " you
might n't have time enough to get where
you 're goin'."

" Few of us have," replied Ump. ** About
the time a feller gits a good start, somethin'
breaks in him an' they nail him up in quarter
oak."

'* Life is short," murmured the tavern-
keeper, retiring behind a platitude as a skirm-
isher retires behind a stone.

Ump bent the prongs of the fork against his
plate. " An' yit," he soliloquised, '* there is
time enough for most of us to do things that
we ought to be hung for."

Roy withdrew to the fastnesses of the
kitchen, re-formed his lines and approached
from another quarter. "If I was Mr.
Ward," he opened, jerking his thumb to-
ward Ump, " I 'd give it to you when you
got in."

The hunchback poured out his coffee, held
up the saucer with both hands and blew away
the heat. ** What for ? " he grunted, between
the puffings.

'• What for ? " said Roy. " Lordy ! man.

««

« «

230 Dwellers in the Hills

you 're about the most reckless creature that
ever set on hog leather."

The devil you say! " said Ump.
That 's what I say," continued the tavern-
keeper, waving his arm to add fury to his bad
declamation. '' That 's what I say. Suppose
you 'd got little Quiller drownded ? "

The hunchback seemed to consider this pos-
sibility with the gravity of one pointed sud-
denly to some defect in his life. He replaced
the saucer on the table, locked his fingers and
thrust his thumbs together.

" If I had got little Quiller drownded," he
began, *' then the old women could n't a
said when he growed up, ' Eh, little Quiller
did n't amount to much after all. I said he
would n't come to no good when I used to see
him goin' by runnin' his horse.' An' when he
got whiskers to growin' on his jaw, flat-nose nig-
gers fishin' along the creek could n't a' cussed
an' said, ' There goes old skinflint Quiller. I
wish he could n't swallow till he give me half
his land.' An' when he got old an' wobbly on
his legs, tow-headed brats a-waitin' for his
money could n't a-p'inted their fingers at him

By the Light of a Lantern 231

an' said, * Ma, how old 's grandpap ?' An'
when he died, nobody could a wrote on his
tombstone, ' He robbed the poor an' he
cheated the rich, an' he 's gone to hell with
the balance a' sich.' "

Routed in his second manoeuvre, Roy flung
a final sally with a sort of servile abandon.
" You 're a queer lot," he said. " Marks an'
that club-footed Malan comes along away be-
fore day an' wants their breakfast, an' gits it,
an' lights out like the devil was a-foUerin' 'em.
An* when I asked 'em what they 'd been doin',
they up an' says they 'd been fixin' lay-overs
to ketch meddlers an' make fiddlers' wives ask
questions. An' then along come you all a-
lookin' like hell an' shy in' at questions."

We took the information with no sign, al-
though it confirmed our theory about the
ferry. Ump turned gravely to the tavern-
keeper.

''I '11 clear it all up for you slick as a
whistle." Then he arose and pressed his
fingers against the tavern-keeper's chest.
*' Roy," he said, " this is the marrow out of
that bone. We 're the meddlers that they

232 Dwellers in the Hills

did n't ketch, an' you 're the fiddler's
wife."

The laughter sent the tavern-keeper flying
from the field. We borrowed some odd pieces
of -clothing, got the lantern, and went down to
the stable to groom our horses.

A man might travel about quite as untidy
as Nebuchadnezzar when events were jamming
him, but his horse was rubbed and cleaned if
the heavens tumbled. I held the lantern, an
old iron frame with glass sides, while Jud and
Ump curried the horses, rubbing the dust out
of their hair, and washing their eyes and
nostrils.

We were speculating on the mission of the
blacksmith, and the destination of Parson
Peppers, of whose singing I had told, when
the talk came finally to Twiggs.

" I 'd give a purty," said Ump, " to know
what word that devil was carryin'."

** Quiller had a chance to find out," an-
swered Jud, " an' he shied away from it."

"What 's that?" cried the hunchback,
coming out from under the Bay Eagle. He
wore a long blue coat that dragged the ground,

By the Light of a Lantern 233

the sleeves rolled up above his wrists, a coat
that Roy had fished out of a box in the loft of
his tavern and hesitated over, because on an
evening in his youthful heyday, he had gone
in that coat to. make a bride of a certain
Mathilda, and the said Mathilda at the final
moment did most stubbornly refuse. The
coat had brass buttons, a plenteous pitting of
moth-holes, and a braided collar.

Jud went on without noticing the interrup-
tion. " The letter that Twiggs brought was
a-layin' on the mantelpiece, tore open. Quil-
ler could a looked just as easy as not, an' a
found out just what it said, but he edged
off."

The hunchback turned around in his blue
coat without disturbing the swallowtails lying
against his legs. " Is Jud right ? " he said.

I nodded my head.

••An' you did n't look ? "

Again I nodded.

•• Quiller," cried Ump, '• do you know how
that way of talkin' started ? The devil was
the daddy of it. He had his mouth crammed
full of souls, an' when they asked him if he

234 Dwellers in the Hills

wanted any more, he begun a-bobbin' his
head like that/'

"It 's every word the truth," said I.
' * There was the letter lying open, with Cyn-
thia's monogram on the envelope, and I could
have looked."

" Why did n't you ? " said Ump.

** High frollickin' notions," responded Jud.
' ' I told him a hog could n't root with a silk

nose."

The hunchback closed his hand and pressed
his thumb up under his chin. " High froUic-
kin' notions," he said, ** are all mighty purty
to make meetin'-house talk, but they 're short
horses when you try to ride 'em. It all de-
pends on where you 're at. If you 're settin'
up to the Lord's table, you must dip with your
spoon, but if you 're suppin' with the devil,
you can eat with your fingers."

I cast about for an excuse, like a lad under
the smarting charge of having said his prayers.
" It wasn't any notion," said I; *' Mr. Marsh
came back too quick."

" Why did n't you yank the paper, an'
we 'd a had it," said he.

By the Light of a Lantern 235

*' We have got it," said I, putting my hand
in my breeches pocket and drawing forth the
letter. I stood deep in the oak leaves of the
horses' bedding. The light of the candle
squeezing through the dirty glass sides
brought every log of the old stable into
shadow.

Jud came out of El Mahdi's stall like some-
thing out of a hole. He wore a rubber coat
that had gone many years about the world, up
and down, and finally passed in its decay to
Roy.

*' You 've got that letter ? " he said.

I told him that I had the very letter, that
it had got wet in the river ; I had dried it in
the sun, and here it was.

'* How did you get it ? " he asked.

I told him all the conversation with Marsh,
and how I was to give it to Cynthia and the
message that went along with it.

The two men came over to me and took the
lantern and the letter from my hands, Jud
holding the light and Ump turning the en-
velope around in his fingers, peering curiously.
They might have been some guardians of a

236 Dwellers in the Hills

twilight country examining a mysterious pass-
port signed right but writ in cipher, and one
that from some hidden angle might be clear
enough.

Presently they handed the letter gravely
back to me and set the lantern down in the
leaves. Jud was silent, like a man embarrassed,
and Ump stood for a moment fingering the
buttons on his blue coat.

Finally he spoke. '* What 's in it ? " he said.

** I don't know," I answered. I was sure
that the man's face brightened, but it might
have been a fancy. Loud in the hooting
of a principle, we sometimes change mightily
when it comes to breaking that principle
bare-handed.

** Are you goin' to look ? " he said.

The letter was lying in my hand. I had but
to plunge my fingers into the open envelope,
but something took me by the shoulder.
" No," I answered, and thrust the envelope
in my pocket.

I take no airs for that decision. There was
something here that these men did not like to
handle, and, in plain terms, I was afraid.

CHAPTER XIX
THE ORBIT OF THE DWARFS

WE slept that night in the front room of
Roy's tavern, and it seemed to me
that I had just closed my eyes when I opened
them again. Ump was standing by the side
of the bed with a candle. The door was ajar
and the night air blowing the flame, which he
was screening with his hand. For a mo-
ment, with sleep thick in my eyes, I did not
know who it was in the blue coat. " Wake
up, Quiller," he said, " an' git into your
duds."

" What 's the matter ? " I asked.

" There 's devilment hatchin', I 'm afraid,"
he answered. " Wait till I wake Jud."

He aroused the man from his snoring in the
chimney corner, and I got into my clothes.

238 Dwellers in the Hills

It was about three o'clock and grey dark. I
looked over the room as I pulled on the round-
about borrowed of Roy. Ump's bed had not
been slept in, and there was about him the
warm smeU of a horse.

Jud noticed the empty bed. ** Ump," he
said, "you ain't been asleep at all.''

" I got uneasy about the cattle," answered
the hunchback, " an I 've been up there with
'em, an' it was dam' lucky. I was settin' on
the Bay Eagle in a little holler, when some-
body come along an' begun to take down the
bars. I lit out for him, an' he run like a
whitehead, jumped the fence on the lower side
of the road an' went splashin' through the
creek, but he left some feathers in the bushes
when he jumped, an' I got 'em."

He put his hand into the bosom of his coat
and drew out a leather cap. *' Christian," I
cried, pointing to the seared spots on the
leather.

Jud crushed the cap in his fingers. " He 's
got back," he said. *' Was he ridin' a horse? "

*' Footin' it," answered Ump, ** an' by him-
self. That 's what makes me leary. Them

The Orbit of the Dwarfs 239

others are up to somethin* or they 'd a come
with him. He 's had just about time to make
the trip on Shank's mare by takin' short cuts.
They 've put him up to turn out the cattle an'
drive 'em back while we snoozed."

*' Maybe they did come with him," said
Jud, " an' they 're waitin' somewhere. It
would be like 'em to come sneakin' back an'
try to drive the cattle over, an' put 'em in the
river in the night, so it would look like they
had got out an' gone away themselves."

Ump's forehead wrinkled like an accordion.
** That 's fittin' to the size of 'em," he said,
** an' about what they 're up to. But old
Chri^ian was surely by himself, an' I don't
understand that. If they 'd a come with him,
I 'd a seen 'em, or a heard the horses."

** I don't believe they came with him,"
said I.

*' Why not ?" said Jud.

** Because," I answered, " if they came with
him they would have put Christian on a horse,
and they would have stopped here to locate
us. They could tell by looking in the stable.
They *d never wait until th6y got to the field.

240 Dwellers in the Hills

They 're a foxy set, and there 's something
back that we don't know."

"What could they do?" put in Jud.
" There 's no more ferries."

" But there 's a bridge," said I.

Ump, standing stock still in the floor,
stumbled like a horse struck over the knees.
Jud bolted out of the house on a dead run.
We followed him to the stable, Ump galloping
like a great rabbit.

We flung open the stable door, thrust the
bits into the horses' mouths, and slapped on
our saddles. It was murky, but we needed no
light for business like this. We knew every
part of the horse as a man knows his face, and
we knew every strap and buckle.

Ump sat on his mare, waiting until we
should be ready, kicking his stirrups with im-
patience, but his tongue, strangely enough,
quiet. He turned his mare across the road
before us when we were in our saddles.

" Jud," he said, ** don't go off half-cocked.
An* if there *s hell raised, look out for Quiller.
I '11 stay here an' bring up the cattle as soon
as it 's light." Then he pulled his mare out

The Orbit of the Dwarfs 241

of the way. £1 Mahdi was on his hind legs
while Ump was speaking. When the Bay
Eagle turned out, he came down with a great
jump and began to run.

I bent over and clamped my knees to the
horse and let him go. He was like some
engine whose throttle is thrown open. In
the first few plunges he seemed to rock with
energy, as though he might be thrown off his
legs by the pent-up driving-power. He and
one other horse, the Black Abbot, started like
this when they were mad. And, clinging in
the saddle, one felt for a moment that the
horse under him would rise out of the road or
go crashing into the fence.

You will not understand this, my masters,
if you have ridden only trained running horses
or light hunters. They go about the business
of a race with eagerness enough, but still as a
servant goes about his task. Imagine, if you
please, how a horse would run with you in the
night if he was seventeen hands high and a
barbarian !

We passed the tavern in a dozen plunges.

I saw the candle which Ump had flung down,
16

242 Dwellers in the Hills

flickering by the horse-block, a little patch of
light. Then the Cardinal's shoe crushed it
out.

My coat sleeves cracked like sails. The
wind seemed to whistle along my ribs. The
horse's shoulders felt like pistons working
under a cloth. I was a part of that horse. I
fitted my body to him. I adjusted myself to
the drive of his legs, to the rise and fall of his
shoulders, to the play of every muscle. I
rode when his back rocked, like a sort of loose
hump fastened on it. His mane blew over my
face and went streaming back. My nostrils
were filled with the steam from his sweating
skin.

Jud rode after the same manner, reducing
the area of wind resistance to the smallest
space. One watching the horses pass would
have seen no rider at all. He might have
marked a heavy outline as though something
were bound across the saddle or clung flat
to it.

You, my masters, who are accustomed to
the horse as a slave, cannot know him as a
freeman. That docked thing standing by the

The Orbit of the Dwarfs 243

curb is a long bred-out degenerate. In the
Hills a horse was bom and bred up to be a
freeman. When the time came, he yielded
to a sort of human suzerainty, but he yielded
as a cadet of a noble house yields to the dis-
cipline of a commandant, with the spirit in
him and as one who condescended.

There were certain traditions which these
horses seemed to hold. The Bay Eagle would
never wear harness, nor would any of her
blood, to the last one. The Black Abbot
would never carry a woman's saddle, nor
would his father nor his father's father. I
have seen them fight like barbarian kings,
great, tawny, desperate savages, bursting the
straps and buckles as Samson burst the withes
of the Philistines, fighting to kill, fighting to
tear in pieces and destroy, fighting as a man
fights when his standards are all down and
he has lost a kingdom.

The earth was grey, with a few stars above
it. The moon had gone over the mountains to
make it day in the mystic city of Zeus, and
the sun was still lagging along the other side
of the world.

244 Dwellers in the Hills

We thundered by the old weaver's little
house squatting by the roadside, shut up tight
like a sleeping eye. Then we swung down
into the sandy strip of bottom leading to the
bridge. The river was not a quarter of a mile
away.

I began to pull on the bridle-reins. El
Mahdi held the bit clamped in his teeth. I
shifted a rein into each hand and tried to saw
the bit loose, but I could not do it. Then,
lying down on the saddle, I wound the slack of
the reins around my wrists, caught out as far
as I could, braced myself against the horn, and
jerked with all the strength of my arms.

I jammed the tree of the saddle up on the
horse's withers, but the bit held in his jaws.
I knew then that the horse was running away.
The devil seemed to be in him. He started
in a fury, and he had run with a sort of rock-
ing that ought to have warned me. I twisted
my head around to look for Jud.

He had begun to pull up the Cardinal and
had fallen a little behind, but he understood
at once, shook out his reins, and leaned over in
his saddle. The nose of the Cardinal came

The Orbit of the Dwarfs 245

almost to my knee and hung there. Jud
caught at my bridle, but he could not reach it.
I wedged my knees against the leather pads of
the saddle skirts, caught one side of the bridle-
rein with both hands, and tried to throw the
horse into the fence. I felt the leather of the
rein stretch.

Then I knew that it was no use to try any
further. Even if Jud could reach my bridle,
he would merely tear it off at the bit-rings,
and not stop the horse.

In a dozen seconds we would reach the
stone abutment and go over into the river. I
had no doubt that the bridge was down, or, if
not, that its flooring was torn up.

I realised suddenly that it was my turn to go
out of the world. I had seen people going out
as though their turn came in a curious order,
not unlike games which children play. But
somehow I never thought that my turn would
come. I was not really in that game. I was
looking on when my name was called out.

£1 Mahdi struck the stone abutment and
the bridge loomed. I dropped the reins and
clung to the saddle, expecting the horse to fall

246 Dwellers in the Hills

with his legs broken, drive me against the
sleepers and crash through.

We went on to the bridge like a rattle of
musketry and thundered across. Horses, re-
sembling women, as I have heard it said, are
sometimes diverted from their purpose by the
removal of every jot of opposition. With
the reins on his neck. El Mahdi stopped at the
top of the hill and I climbed down to the
ground. My legs felt weak and I held on
to the stirrup leather.

Jud dismounted, seized my bit, and ran his
hand over £1 Mahdi's face. " I can't make
head nor tail of that runnin'," he said. " He
ain't scared nor he ain't mad."

" You could n't tell with him," I answered.

" There never was a scared horse," re-
sponded Jud, " that was n't nervous, an'
there never was a mad one that was n't hot.
But this feller feels like a suckin' calf. It
must have been devilment, an' he ought to be
whaled."

*' It would n't do any good," said I; " he 'd
only fight you and try to kill you."

" He 's a dam* curious whelp," said Jud.

The Orbit of the Dwarfs 247

'* He must a knowed that the bridge was all
right/'

" How could he have known ? " said I.

" They say," replied Jud, " that horses an'
cattle sees things that folks don't see, an' that
they know about what 's goin' to happen.
It 's powerful curious about the things they
do know."

We slipped the reins over the horses' heads
and walked back to the bridge. Jud went on
with his talking.

" Now, you can't get a horse on to a dan-
gerous bridge, to save your life, an' you can't
get him on ice that ain't strong enough to
hold him, an' you can't get him to eat any-
thing that '11 hurt him, an' you can't get him
lost. An* old Clabe says there 's Bible for it
that a horse can see spooks. I tell you, Quil-
ler. El Mahdi knowed about that bridge."

Deep in my youthful bosom I was convinced
that El Mahdi knew. But I put it wholly on
the ground that he was a genius.

We crossed the river, led the horses down to
the end of the abutment, and tied them to a
fence. Then we went back and examined the

248 Dwellers in the Hills

bridge as well as we could in the dark. It
stood over the river as the early men and
Dwarfs had built it, — solid as a wall.

Woodford had given the thing up, and the
road was open to the north country.

We sat down on the comer of the abutment
near the horses, to wait for the daylight, Jud
wearing old Christian's cap, and I bareheaded.
We sat for a long time, listening to the choke
and snarl of the water as it crowded along
under the bridge.

Then we fell to a sort of whispering talk.

" QuiUer," he began, "do you believe that
story about the Dwarfs buildin' the bridge ? "

" Ump don't," I answered. *' Ump says
it 's a cock-and-bull story, and there never
were any Dwarfs except once in a while a bad
job like him."

" You can't take Ump for it," said he.
** Ump won't believe anything he can't put
his finger on, if it 's swore to on a stack of
Bibles. Quiller, I 've seen them holes in the
mountains where the Dwarfs lived, with the
marks on the rocks like 's on them logs, an'
I 've seen the rigamajigs that they cut in the

The Orbit of the Dwarfs 249

sandstone. They could a built the bridge, if
they took a notion, just by sayin' words."

He was quiet a while, and then he added,
** An' I 've seen the path where they used to
come down to the river, an' it has places wore
in the solid rock like you 'd make with your
big toe."

Jud stopped, and I moved up a little closer
to him. I could see the ugly, crooked men
crawl out of their caves and come sneaking
down from the mountains to strangle the
sleeping and burn the roof. I could see their
twisted bare feet, their huge, slack mouths, and
their long hands that hung below their knees
when they walked. And then, on the hill
beyond the Valley River, I heard a sound.

I seized my companion by the arm. * * Jud, ' '
I said under my breath, ** did you hear that ? "

He leaned over me and listened. The sound
was a sort of echo.

" They 're comin'," he whispered,

" The Dwarfs ?" said I.

'' Lem Marks," said he.

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CHAPTER XX

ON THE ART OF GOING TO RUIN

THE sound reached the summit of the hill,
and then we heard it clearly, — ^the ringing
of horseshoes on the hard road. They came
in a long trot, clattering into the little hollow
at the foot of the abutment to the bridge.
We heard men dismounting, horses being tied
to the fence, and a humming of low talk. We
listened, lying flat beside El Mahdi and the
Cardinal.

It was difficult to determine how many were
in the hollow, but all were now afoot but one.
We could hear his horse tramping, and hear
him speaking to the others from the saddle
above them.

A man with his back toward us lighted a

lantern. When he turned to lead the way up

250

On the Art of Going to Ruin 251

the abutment into the bridge, we caught a
flickering picture of the group. I could make
out Lem Marks as the man with the lantern,
and Malan behind him, and I could see the
brown shoulder of the horse and the legs of
the rider, but the man's face was above the
reach of the light. It was perhaps Parson
Peppers.

They stopped at the sill of the bridge, and
the man with the lantern began to examine the
flooring and the ends of the logs set into the
stone of the abutment.

He moved about slowly, holding the lantern
close to the ground. Malan stopped by the
horse. I could see the dingy light now mov-
ing in the bridge, now held over the edge of
the abutment, now creeping along the borders
of the sill.

Once it passed close to the horse, and I saw
his hoofs clearly and his brown legs, and the
club feet of Malan, and the gleam of an axe.
They were on the far side of the river, and the
howling of the water tumbled their voices into
a sort of jumble. The man on the horse
seemed to give some directions which were

252 Dwellers in the Hills

carried out by the one with the lantern. Then
they gathered in a little group and put the
thing under discussion.

Lem Marks talked for some minutes^ and
once Malan pointed with the axe. I could
see the light slip along its edge. Then they
all went into the bridge together.

The tallow candle struggling through the
dingy windows of the lantern lighted the
bridge as a dying fire lights a forest, in a little
space, half-heartedly, with all the world
blacker beyond that space. They stopped at
the bridge-mouth on our side of the river, and
Marks carried the lantern over the lower end
of the abutment. Then he called Malan.
The clubfoot got down on his knees and held
the light over by the log sleeper of the bridge.

I could see where the bark had been burned
along the log. I heard Marks say that this
was the place to cut. Then the man on the
horse rode out close to Malan and bent over
to look. The clubfoot raised his lantern, and
the rider's face came into the play of the light.
My heart lifted trembling into my throat. It
was Woodford !

On the Art of Going to Ruin 253

I grabbed for Jud, and my fingers caught
the knee of his breeches. He was squatted
down in the road with a stone in his hand.

Woodford nodded his head, gave some order
which I could not hear, and moved his horse
back from the edge of the abutment. Malan
arose and picked up his axe. Marks took the
lantern, trying to find some place where the
light could be thrown on the face of the log.
He shifted to several positions and finally took
a place at the comer of the bridge, holding the
light over the side.

Malan stood with his club feet planted
wide on the log, leaned over, and began to
hack the bark off where he wished to take out
his great chip. .

I could hear the little pieces of charred bark
go rattling down into the river. Malan
notched the borders of his chip, then shifted
his weight a little to his right leg and swung
the axe back over his shoulder. It came down
gleaming true, it seemed to me, but the blade,
turning as it descended, dealt the log a glanc-
ing blow and wrenched the handle out of the
man's band. I saw the axe glitter as it passed

254 Dwellers in the Hills

the smoked glass of the lantern. Then it
struck the side of the bridge with a great rip-
ping bang, and dropped into the river.

I jumped up with a cry of " the Dwarfs! "

The swing of the axe carried Malan for-
ward. He lost his balance, threw up his hands
and began to topple. I saw the shadow of the
horse fall swiftly across the light. Malan
was seized by the collar and flung violently
backward. Then Woodford caught the lantern
from Marks and came on down the abutment
toward us.

He rode slowly with the lantern against his
knee. The horse, blinded by the light, did
not see us until he was almost upon us. Then
he jumped back with a snort. Woodford raised
the lantern above his head and looked down.

Bareheaded, in Roy's roundabout, I was a
queer looking youngster. Jud, with old
Christian's leather cap pulled on his head and
a stone in his fist, might have been brother to
any cutthroat. Stumbled upon in the dark
we must have looked pretty wild.

Woodford regarded us with very apparent
unconcern. " Quiller," he said, as one might

On the Art of Going to Ruin 255

have announced a guest of indifferent welcome.
The^ he set the lantern down on his saddle
horn. ** Well," he said, ** this is a piece of
luck."

I was struck dumb by the man's friendly
voice and my resolution went to pieces. I
began to stammer like a novice taken in a
wrong. Then Woodford did a cunning thing.

He assumed that I was not embarrassed,
but that I was amused at his queer words.

" Upon my life, QuiUer," he said, " I don't
wonder that you laugh. It was a queer thing
to go blurting out, you moving the very devil
to get your cattle over the Valley, and I using
every influence I may have with that gentle-
man to prevent it. Now, that was a funny
speech."

I got my voice then. ** I don't see the luck
of it, " I said.

** And that," said he, ** is just what I am
about to explain. In the meantime Jud might
toss that rock into the river." There was a
smile playing on the man's face.

'' If it 's the same to you," said Jud, '' I '11
just hold on to the rock."

2S6 Dwellers in the Hills

•* As you please," replied Woodford, still
smiling down at me. '' I 'd like a word with
you, Quiller. Shall we go out on the road a
little ? '•

" Not a foot," said I.

On my life, the man sighed deeply and
passed his hand over his face. '' If I had such
men," he said, '' I would n't be here pulling
down a bridge. Your brother, Quiller, is in
great luck. With such men, I could twist the
cattle business around my finger. But when
one has to depend upon a lot of numbskulls,
he can expect to come out at the little end of
the horn."

I began to see that this Woodford, under
some lights, might be a very sensible and a
very pleasant man. He got down from his
saddle, held up the lantern and looked me
over. Then he set the light on the ground
and put his hands behind his back. " Quil-
ler," he began, as one speaks into a sympa-
thetic ear, * * there is no cement that will hold
a man to you unless it is blood wetted. You
can buy men by the acre, but they are eye
servants to the last one. A brother sticks,

On the Art of Going to Ruin 257

right or wrong, and perhaps a son sticks, but
the devil take the others. I never had a
brother, and, therefore, Providence put me
into the fight one arm short."

He began to walk up and down behind the
lantern, taking a few long strides and then
turning sharply. '* Doing things for one's
self," he went on, ** comes to be tiresome
business. A man must have someone to
work for, or he gets to the place where he
doesn't care." He stopped before me with
his face full in the light. ** Quiller," he said,
and the voice seemed to ring true, ** I meant
to prevent your getting north with these
cattle. I hoped to stop you without being
compelled to destroy this bridge, but you
force me to make this move, and I shall make
it. Still, on my life, I care so little that I

would let the whole thing go on the spin of a

•>

com.

His face brightened as though the idea

offered some easy escape from an unpleasant

duty. ** Upon my word," he laughed, ** I

was not intending to be so fair. But the offer

is out, and I will stand by it,"
17

258 Dwellers in the Hills

He put his hand in his pocket and took out
a silver dollar. " You may toss, Quiller, heads
or tails as you choose/'

I refused, and the man pitched the coin into
the air, caught it in his hand and returned it
to his pocket.

** Perhaps you think you will be able to stop
me," he said in a voice that came ringing over
something in his throat. ** We 're three, and
Malan is a better man than Jud."

** He is not a better man," said I.

** There is a way to tell," said he.

" And it can't begin too quick," said I.

'• Done," said he. ''At it they go, right
here in the road, and the devil take me if
Malan does not dust your man's back for
you."

He spun around, caught up the lantern, and
we all went up to the level floor of the abut-
ment at the bridge sill. Lem Marks and the
clubfoot were waiting. Woodford turned to
them.

** Malan," he said, ** I 've heard a great
deal of talk out of you about a wrestle with
Jud at Roy's tavern. Now I 'm going to

On the Art of Going to Ruin 259

see if there *s any stomach behind that
talk."

I thrust in. ** It must be fair," I said.

*' Fair it shall be, " said he;** catch-as-catch-
can or back-holds?" And he turned to
Malan.

•• Back-holds," said the clubfoot, *' if that
suits Jud."

" Anything suits me," answered Jud.

The two men stripped. Jud asked for the
lantern and examined the ground. It was the
width of the abutment, perhaps thirty feet,
practically level, and covered with a loose sand
dust. There was no railing to this abutment,
not even a coping along its borders.

I followed Jud as he went over every foot of
the place. I wanted to ask him what he
thought, but I was afraid. Presently he came
back to the bridge, set down the lantern, and
announced that he was ready.

There was not a breath of air moving. The
door of the lantern stood open, and the smoke
from the half-burned tallow candle streamed
straight up and squeezed out at the peaked top.

The two men took their places, leaned over.

26o Dwellers in the Hills

and each put his big arms around the other.
Malan had torn the sleeves out of his shirt,
and Jud had rolled his above the elbow.

Woodford picked up the lantern, nodded to
me to follow him, and we went around the
men to see if the positions they had taken
were fair. Each was entitled to one under-
hold, that is, the right arm around the body
and under the left arm of his opponent, the
left arm over the opponent's right, and the
hands gripped. It is the position of the grizzly,
hopeless for the weaker man.

The two had taken practically the same hold,
except that Malan locked his fingers, while
Jud gripped his left wrist with his right hand.
Jud was perhaps four inches taller, but Malan
was heavier by at least twenty pounds.

We came back and stood by the floor of the
bridge, Woodford holding the lantern with
Lem Marks and I beside him. Malan . said
that the light was in his eyes, and Woodford
shifted the lantern until the men's faces were
in the dark. Then he gave the word.

For fully a minute, it seemed to me, the
two men stood, like a big bronze. Then I

On the Art of Going to Ruin 261

could see the muscles of their shoulders con-
tracting under a powerful tension as though
each were striving to lift some heavy thing up
out of the earth. It seemed, too, that Malan
squeezed as he lifted, and that Jud's shoulder
turned a little, as though he wished to brace
it against the clubfoot's breast, or was troubled
by the squeezing.

Malan bent slowly backward, and Jud's
heels began to rise out of the dust. Then, as
though a crushing weight descended suddenly
through his shoulder, Jud threw himself
heavily against Malan, and the two fell. I
ran forward, the men were down sidewise in
the road.

" Dog fall," said Woodford; " get up."

But the blood of the two was now heated.
They hugged, panted, and rolled over. Wood-
ford thrust the lantern into their faces and
began to kick Malan. " Get up, you dog,"
he said.

They finally unlocked their arms and got
slowly on their legs. Both were breathing
deeply and the sweat was trickling over their
faces.

262 Dwellers in the Hills

Woodford looked at the infuriated men and
seemed to reflect. Presently he turned to me,
as the host turns to the honourable guest.
*' QuiUer," he said, " these savages want to
kill each other. We shall have to close the
Olympic games. Let us say that you have
won, and no tales told. Is it fair ? "

I stammered that it was fair. Then he
came over and linked his arm through mine.
He asked me if I would walk to the horses
with him. I could not get away, and so I
walked with him.

He pointed to the daylight breaking along
the edges of the hills, and to the frost glisten-
ing on the bridge roof. He said it reminded
him how, when he was little, he would stand
before the frosted window panes trying to
understand what the etched pictures meant,
and how sure he was that he had once known
about this business, but had somehow forgot-
ten. And how he tried and tried to recall the
lost secret. How sometimes he seemed about
to get it, and then it slipped away, and how
one day he realised that he should never
remember, and what a blow it was.

On the Art of Going to Ruin 263

Then he said a lot of things that I did not
understand. He said that when one grew out
of childhood, he lost his sympathy with events,
and when that sympathy was lost, it was pos-
sible to live in the world only as an adventurer
with everything in one's hand.

He said a sentinel watched to see if a man
set his heart on a thing, and if he did the
sentinel gave some sign, whereupon the devil's
imps swarmed up to break that thing in pieces.
He said that sometimes a man beat off the
devils and saved the thing, but it was rare, and
meant a life of tireless watching. From every
point of view, indifference was better.

Still, he said, it was a mistake for a man to
allow events to browbeat him. He ought to
fight back, hitting where he could. An event,
once in a while, was strangely a coward. Be-
sides that, if Destiny found a man always
ready to strip, she came after a while to accord
to him the courtesies of a duellist, and if he
were a stout fellow, she sometimes hesitated
before she provoked a fight. Of course the
man could not finally beat her off, but she
would set him to one side, as a person with

264 Dwellers in the Hills

whom she was going to have trouble, and give
him all the time she could.

He said a man ought to have the courage to
strike out for what he wanted ; that the ship-
wrecked who got desperately ashore was a
better man than the hanger-back ; that a great
misfortune was a great compliment. It meas-
ured the resistance of the man. Destiny
would not send artillery against a weakling.
It was sometimes finer to fight when the lights
were all out; I would not understand that,
men never did until they were about through
with life. But, above everything else, he
said, a man ought to go to his ruin with a sort
of princely indifference. God Almighty could
not hurt the man who did not care.

Then he gave me a friendly direction about
the cattle, to put them in his boundary on our
road home, bade me remember our contract of
no tales told, and got into his saddle.

I watched him cross the bridge, and ride
away through the Hills with his men, humming
some song about the devil and a dainty maid,
and I wished that I might grow up to have
such splendid courage. His big galleon had

On the Art of Going to Ruin 265

gone down on the high seas with a treasure in
her hold that I could not reckon, and he went
singing like one who finds a kingdom.

Then Jud called to nie to get out of the
road, and' a muley steer went by at my elbow.

CHAPTER XXI

THE EXIT OF THE PRETENDER

I SAT in the saddle of El Mahdi on the hill-
top beyond the bridge, and watched the
day coming through the gateway of the world.
It was a work of huge enchantment, as when,
for the pleasure of some ancient caliph, or at
the taunting of some wanton queen, a withered
magus turned the ugly world into a kingdom
of the fairy, and the lolling hangers-on started
up on their elbows to see a green field spread-
ing through the dirty city and great trees rising
above the vanished temples, and wild roses and
the sweet dew-drenched brier trailing where the
camel's track had just faded out, and autumn
leaves strewn along pathways of a wood, and
hills behind it all where the sunlight flooded.

It was like the mornings that came up from

266

The Exit of the Pretender 267

the sea by the Wood Wonderful, or those that
broke smiling when the world was newly
minted, — mornings that trouble the blood of
the old shipwreck sunning by the door, and
move the stay-at-home to sail out for the
Cloud Islands. Full of the joy of life was this
October land.

I could almost hear the sunlight running
with a shout as it plunged in among the
hickory trees and went tumbling to the thick-
ets of the hollow. The mist hanging over
the low meadows was a golden web, stretched
by enchanted fingers across some exquisite
country into which a man might come only
through his dreams.

I waited while the drove went by, counting
the cattle to see that none had been over-
looked in the night. The Aberdeen-Angus
still held his place in the front, and the big
muley bull marched by like a king's governor,
keeping his space of clear road at the peril of
a Homeric struggle.

I knew every one of the six hundred, and I
could have hugged each great black fellow as
he trudged past.

268 Dwellers in the Hills

Jud and the Cardinal went by in the middle
of the long line and passed out of sight behind
a turn of the hill below. The giant rode
slowly, lolling in his saddle and swinging his
big legs free of the stirrups.

Then the lagging rear of the drove trailed
up, and the hunchback followed on the Bay
Eagle. He was buttoned to the chin in Roy's
blue coat and looked for all the world like
some shrivelled old marshal of the empire, a
hundred days out of Paris, covering the retreat
of the imperial army.

El Mahdi stood on the high bank by the
roadside, in among the dead blackberry briers,
and I sat with the rein under my legs and my
hands in my pockets.

The hunchback stopped his horse in the road
below me, squared himself in his saddle, and
looked up with a great supercilious grin.

'* Well," he said, " I '11 be damn! "

" What 's the trouble ? " said I.

'* Humph! " he snorted, '* are them britches
I see on your legs ? '*

That 's what they call them," said I.
Well," said he, *' when you git home,

<<

•<

The Exit of the Pretender 269

take 'em off, an' hand *em over to old Liza,
an' ask her to bring your kilts down out of the
garret. For you 're as innocent a little codger
as ever sucked his hide full of milk."

** What are you driving at ? " I asked.

Ump shook out his long arms and folded
them around the bosom of his blue coat.
'* Jud told me," he said; ** an' the pair of you
ought to be put in a cradle with a rock-a-by-
baby. Woodford was done when that axe fell
in the river, an' he knowed it. He was ridin'
out when he saw you an' Jud, an' he said to
himself, * God 's good to you, Rufus, my boy;
here 's a pair of little babies a long way from
their ma, an' it ought to count you one.'
Then he lit off an' offered to wrastle you,
heads I win an' tails you lose, /for the cake in
your pocket, an' then he chucked you under
the chin, an' you promised not to tell."

The hunchback set his two fingers against
his teeth and whistled like a hawk, a long,
shrill, hissing whistle that startled the little
partridges on the sloping hillside and sent them
scurrying under the dead grass, and brought
the drumming pheasant to his feathered legs.

270 Dwellers in the Hills

Then he threw his chin into the air and
squinted. *' Quiller," he piped, with the long
echo still whining in his throat, " that whistle
fooled you an' it fooled Jud, but it would n't
fool a Bob White with the shell on its back.
When the old bird hears it, she don't wait to
see the long shadow travellin' on the grass,
but she hollers, ' Into the weeds, boys, if you
want to save your bacon.' An' you ought to
see the little codgers scatter. Let it be a les-
son to you, Quiller, my laddiebuck ; when you
hear that whistle, light out for the tall timber.
When you 're a fightin' the devil, half the
winnin' 's in the runnin'."

Then he opened his great cavernous mouth
and began to bellow,

" Ho ! ho ! for the carrion crow.
But hark to the sqawk of the carrion hawk,"

gathered up his reins and set out after the
drove in a hand gallop, all doubled over in his
blue coat.

I got £1 Mahdi into the road and we went
swinging down the hill. I had a light flashed
into the deeps of Woodford, and I saw dimly

The Exit of the Pretender 271

how able and how dangerous a man he was.
I began to comprehend something of the long
complex formula that goes to make up a
human identity, and it was a discovery as
startling as when a fellow perched on his
grandfather's shoulder sees through the key-
hole a tangle of wheels all going behind the
white face of the clock.

I had been deftly handled by this Wood-
ford, and yet I had not seemed to be. He
had striven to move me to his will with a sort
of masked edging, and, failing in that, left me
with the bitterness drawn out. More than
that, — shrewd and far-sighted man, — taken hot
against him, I was almost won over to his
star.

Under the hammering of the hard-headed
Ump, I saw Woodford in another light. But
I carried no ill will. He had jousted hard and
lost, and youth holds no post-mortems. But
the flock of night birds had not flown out into
the sun. Dislodged from one quarter, they
flapped across my heart to another ridgepole.

Woodford had been holding the blue hills
with his men, and we knew what it meant to

272 Dwellers in the Hills

go up against him. But down yonder in
among the Lares of our house, one worked
against us with her nimble fingers. My heart
went hard against the woman.

If she drew back from our floorboard, there
was the tongue in her head to say it. No
obligation bound her. True, we had given
her of our love freely. But it was a thing no
man could set a price on, and no man could
pay, save as he told back the coin which he
had borrowed. And failing in that coin, it
was a debt beyond him.

The door to our house stood pulled back on
its hinges. Nothing barred it but the sun. If
the god Whim was piping, she could follow
to the world's end. One might as well bow out
the woman when her blood is cooling. Against
the human heart the king's writs have never
run.

I slapped my pocket above the letter. The
current had turned and was running landward.
The evil thing cast out upon its flood was
riding back. I hoped it might sting cruelly
the hand that flung it.

I rose in my stirrups and shook my youthful

The Exit of the Pretender 273

fists at the hills beyond the Gauley. I could
see the smile dying on her red mouth when
one came to say that her plans were ship-
wrecked.

Then I thought of Ward, and something
fluttered in my throat. He was under the
spell of this slim, brown-haired witch. She
was in his blood, running to his finger-tips.
She was on him like the sun. Why could not
the woman see what the good God was hand-
ing down to her ? It was the treasure worth
a kingdom. Did she think to find this thing
at any crossroads ? Oh, she would see. She
would see. This thing was found rarely by
the luckiest, so rarely that many an old wise
man held that there was no such treasure
under the sun, and the quest of it was but a
fool's errand.

I was a mile behind the drove, and when I
came up it had reached the borders of Wood-
ford's land. Jud had thrown down the high
fence, staked-and-ridered with long chestnut
rails, and the stream of cattle was pouring
through and spreading out over the great
pasture. I watched the little groups of

x8

274 Dwellers in the Hills

muleys strike out through the deep broom-
sedge hollows and the narrow bulrush
marshes and the low gaps of the good sodded
hills, spying this new country, finding where
the grass was sweetest and where the water
bubbled in the old poplar trough, and what
wind-sheltered cove would be warmest to a
fellow's belly when he lay sleeping in the
sun.

Then we rode north through the Hills, over
the Gauley where the oak leaves carpeted the
ford, and the little trout darted like a beam
of light, and the old fish-hawk sat on the
hanging limb of the dead beech-tree with his
shoulders to his ears and his beak drooping,
like some worn-out voluptuary brooding on
his sins.

On we went through the deep wooded lanes
where the redbird stepped about in his long
crimson coat, jerring at the wren, who worked
in the deep thicket as though the Master
Builder had gone away to kingdom come and
left her behind to finish the world.

We came to many a familiar landmark of my
golden babyhood, the enchanted grove on the

The Exit of the Pretender 275

Seely Hill where I had hunted fabled monsters
and gone whooping down among the cattle,
the Greathouse meadow where Red Mike
pitched me out of the saddle when he grew
tired of having his bit jerked, and I sat up in
my little petticoats and solemnly demanded
that Jourdan should cut his head off, a thing
the old man promised on his sacred honour
when he could borrow the ax of the man in
the moon; the high gatepost by the cattle-
scales where I perched bareheaded in a calico
dress and watched old Bedford make his last
fight against human government, Bedford, a
bull of mysterious notions, that would kill you
if he found you walking in his field, and lick
your stirrup if you came riding on a horse.

It was now a country of rich meadow-land,
and blue-grass hills rising to long, flat ridges
that the hickories skirted; but in that other
time it was a land of wonders, where in any
summer morning, if a fellow set out on his
chubby legs, he might come to enchanted
forests, lost rivers, halcyon kingdoms guarded
by some spell where the roving fairies hunted
the great bumblebee to the doorway of his

276 Dwellers in the Hills

house, and slew him on its sill and carried off
his treasure.

Through the fringe of locust bushes along
the roadside we caught the first glimpse of
home, and the three horses pricked up their
ears and swung out in a longer trot. We
clattered down the wide lane and tumbled out
of the saddles at the gate, leaving the Bay
Eagle standing proudly like some victorious
general, and the Cardinal like a tired giant
who has done his work, and El Mahdi with his
grey head high above the gate looking away as
of old to the far-off mountains as though he
wondered vaguely if the friend or the message
or the enemy would never come.

We marched over the flagstone walk and
into the house and up the stairway. Old Liza
flung us some warning through a window to
the garden, which we failed to catch and bel-
lowed back a welcome. Then we gained the
door to the library, threw it open and went
crowding in.

A step beyond that door we halted with a
jerk. Ward was lounging in a big chair with
a pillow behind his shoulder, and over by the

The Exit of the Pretender 277

open window where the sun danced along the
casement was Cynthia Carper setting a sheaf
of roses in a jar.

Ward looked us down to the floor, and then
he laughed until the great chair tottered on its
legs. " Cynthia," he cried, ** will you drop a
courtesy to the gallant troopers ? " She spun
around with a fear kindling in her eyes.

''The cattle!" she said. ''Did you get
them over ? "

I had the situation in my fingers, and I felt
myself grow taller with it. " Yes," I said
harshly. Then I put my hand into my
pocket, drew out the letter and handed it to
her with a mocking bow. " I was asked to
carry this letter back to you, and say that my
brother's word is good enough for Nicholas
Marsh."

She took the envelope and stood twisting it
in her slim fingers, while a light came up
slowly in the land beyond her eyelids.

Ward held out his hand for the letter. And
then I looked to see her flutter like a pinned fly.
She grew neither red nor white, but crossed
to his chair and put the letter in his hand.

278 Dwellers in the Hills

He tore off the envelope and ran his eyes
down the written page. " Your order for the
money !" he cried; '* this was not mentioned
in our plan. What is this ? "

" That," said the straight young woman,
" is a field order of the commanding general
issued without the knowledge of the war de-
partment."

Then I saw the whole underpinning of the
scheme, and my heart stumbled and went
groping about the four walls of its house. I
tramped out of the room and down the stair-
way to the bigf window at the first landing. I
stopped and leaned out over the walnut case-
ment. El Mahdi stood as I had left him,
staring at the far-off wall of the Hills; and
below me in the garden old Liza stooped over
her vines, not a day older, it seemed to me,
than when I galloped at her long apron-
strings on Alhambra the Son of the Wind.

THE END

FEB'^ 1918

NEW FICTION

THE FOREST SCHOOLMASTER

By Peter Rosbgger. Authorized translation by Frances E.
Skinner. 12°, $1.50.

This is the first English version of the popular Austrian novelist's
work, and no better choice from his writings could have been made
through which to introduce him to the American public. It is a
strange, sweet tale, this story of an isolated forest community civil-
ized and r^^nerated by the life of one man. The translator has
caught the spirit of the work, and Ros^;ger's virile style loses nothing
in me translation.

LOVE AND HONOUR

By M. E. Carr. la"", $1.50.

A thrilline story that carries the reader from the closing incidents
of the FrenoL Revolution, through various campaigns of the Na-
poleonic wars, to the final scene on a family estate in Germany.
The action of the plot is well sustained, and the style might be des-
cribed as vivid, while the old battle between love and honor is
fought out with such freshness of treatment as to seem new.

DWELLERS IN THE HILLS

By Melville D. Post. i2**» $1.50.

Mr. Post is to be congratulated upon having found a new field for
fiction. The scene of his latest story is laid amidst the hills of
West Virginia. Many of the exciting incidents are based upon actual
enerience on the catde ranges of the South. The story is original,
full of action, and strong, with a local color almost entirely new to
the reading public.

DUPES

By Ethel Watts Mumford. 16'', paper, socts. ; cloth, $1.25.

A novel more thoroughly original than ** Dupes,*' both in charac-
ter and in plot, has not appeared for some time. The ** dupes" are
society people, who, like die Athenians, ** spent their time in nothing
else but either to tell or to hear some new thins.'' Apart from its
charm as a love story, the book makes some clever hits at certain
** new things." While this is Mrs. Mumford's first book, she is well
known as a writer of short stories.

%ov» %ttttKS of a ^nsicism

By Myrtle Reed. 12% gilt top • , . $1.75

'* Miss Reed's book is an exquisite prose poem — words strung on
thought-threads of gold — ^in which a musician tells his love for one
whom he has found to be his ideal. The idea is not new, but the
opinion is ventured that nowhere has it been one-half so well
carried out as in the * Love Letters of a Musician.* The ecstacy of
hope, the apathy of despair, alternate in these enchanting letters,
without one line of cymdsm to mar the beauty of their effect." —
Rochester Heralds

%vXtx %^vt %t\Xtxs 0f a ^ttBijcian

By Myrtle Reed. 12^, gilt top . . . $1.75

" It was with considerable hesitation that Myrtle Reed*s second
volume of a musician's love letters was taken up, a natural inference
being that Miss Reed could scarcely hope to repeat her first success.
Yet that she has equalled, if not surpassed, the interest of her earlier
letters is soon apparent. Here will be found the same delicate
fancy, the same beautiful imagery, and the same musical phrases
from well-known composers, introducing the several chapters, and
eiving the key to their various moods. Miss Reed has accomplished
her purpose successfully in both series of the letters." — N, K. Timet
Saturday Review.

$fie giar^i of a Sveamjev

By Alice Dew-Smith, author of " Soul Shapes/' ** A
White Umbrella," etc. 12°, gilt top . . $1.50

** A book to be read as a sedative by the busy and overworked.
The scene is laid in England, and is bathed in a peculiarly English
atmosphere of p>eace and leisure. Contains much domestic pmlos-
ophy of a pleasing if not very original sort, and, incidentally, n* lit-
tle good-natured social satire." — N. Y. Evening Post.

** This is a book of the meditative order. The writer expresses
her thoughts in a manner that is a delightful reminder of * Reveries
of a Bachelor ' of Ike Marvel. ... In parts it is amusing, in
the manner of Mark Twain's * Sketches.* The combination of
humor and sensible reflection results to the reader's delight. "*-
Albany Times Union,

" * The Diary of a Dreamer * is a charming treatment of the every-
day topics of life. As in * Reveries of a Bachelor ' and * Elizabeth
and her German Garden,* we find an engaging presentation, from
the feminine point of view, of the scenes and events that make up
the daily living. The * Diary * is one of those revelations of thought
and feeling that fit so well into the reader's individual experience. "
— Detroit Free Press,

6. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, New York and LoiKlofl